BOOK REVIEWS

Trucks dump rocks to complete the final damming of the diversion channel of the Yangtze River at Sandouping, in China’s central Hubei province. (AP Photos/str)

A local resident watches the construction of a section of the Three Gorges Dam. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

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From The Asian Reporter, V13, #16 (April 15-21, 2003), page 16.

By Deirdre Chetham

Palgrave, 2002

Hardcover, 272 pages, $24.95

By David Johnson

One of the longest rivers in the world, the Yangtze flows 4,000 miles from the Tibetan-Quinghai Plateau down to Shanghai and the China Sea. In the upper reaches of this waterway, the Three Gorges, a mountainous passage through towering cliffs, will soon be a memory of a magic landscape cherished by millions.

The stunning medium for this change will be the largest hydroelectric dam ever constructed, scheduled for completion in 2009. It will stretch 1.45 miles across Xiling Gorge, the easternmost canyon.

To capture and preserve a remembrance of a trio of nature’s great wonders with their rich history, millennia of mythology, and constantly treacherous navigation, Deirdre Chetham has written a meticulously researched, emotionally charged account of China’s uphill battle to erect the barricade. It can be divided into three genres:

It’s a fact-filled report replete with startling statistics. It’s a historical, ecological, and cultural treatise profiling the populace, endangered animals and plants, and archeological treasures that will be displaced, inundated, or simply made to vanish when the barrier is in place. And it’s the personal memoir of a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who has explored the Yangtze for two decades.

First the facts: when the work is finished in approximately six years, the dam will be 600 feet tall and five times as wide as Hoover Dam. The water level behind this colossus will rise to 574 feet, creating a 360-mile reservoir and submerging over a dozen large cities, 1,500 towns and villages, and numerous historical, spiritual, and cultural sites.

Through Chetham’s eyes and from her heart we feel a profound sense of loss and compassion for the victims of this historical transformation. Focusing on major cities including Shibao Block, Fengjie, and Wushan, she speaks eloquently for the region’s river-folk. She reports that an estimated 1.3 million Chinese will be forced to abandon their homeland, ancient graves of their ancestors, beloved cliff dwellings, and boulders imbued with fable. They have no choice but to start over again on higher ground.

The concurrent loss of 1,300 archeological sites with primitive calligraphy, early poems, and hand-carved navigation aids will be a calamity for art historians and archeologists.

Environmentalists also are marshalling resources to save rare herbs found only in the Gorges, and endangered animals including the finless porpoise, Yangtze alligator, Siberian white crane, and the South China Siku deer.

Chetham quotes a concerned historian who laments, "There is not enough time or money to save all the artifacts and sites of importance along the Yangtze ...."

Chetham’s well-documented record of the political and military fervor that has swirled around the Three Gorges Dam is in itself a capsule history of China. The people of the upper Yangtze, besieged by thousands of years of tyrannical warlords, ardent reformists, and foreign oppressors, have continued to endure, shipping their produce and handiwork to customers in the valleys below. It’s a familiar story throughout the rest of China.

The author explains that war has always played a major role in the history of the Three Gorges. During the early years of the 20th century, as the gunfire of World War I could be heard in the Far East, "dozens of English, American, French, Italian, and Japanese gunboats patrolled the Yangtze to watch over their national commercial interests."

The region was also a battlefield in World War II. Some older men showed Chetham a cave in Bellows Gorge that was used as shelter from the Japanese. It’s now filled with pool tables.

The country’s leaders of the modern era have all dreamed of a dam that would provide an unimagined bounty of electricity and control cataclysmic floods. Sun Yat-sen first proposed the idea, Chiang Kai-shek spoke of blocking the gorges, Mao had a vision of economic might engendered by hydroelectric power, and Zhou Enlai was excited about the project in the 1950s.

Its future dimmed during the Great Leap Forward, when plans to build the dam were set aside. In 1970, after the leap had stumbled, the U.S. Bureau of Land Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers offered their assistance. Heartened by this help, Chinese contractors went back to their drawing boards. In the 1980s, preliminary work started and stopped as controversies continued to flare and disagreements raged.

Finally, after a groundbreaking ceremony was held on December 14, 1994, a determined Chinese government began construction of the dam in 1997.

As an incentive to get citizens behind the project, Chinese Government officials tout not only flood control and electric juice for the nation, but the beauty of the huge, imminent lakes. They claim that higher water will allow cruise ships to navigate the upper river turned lagoon, and that ancient cliff temples will be more accessible. Think of the booming tourist industry, they suggest.

Unimpressed by the upside of the gargantuan project, Chetham mentions what is, perhaps, her deepest distress: "In China, not only does every rock and inlet have a story associated with it, but a god as well. It is a disorderly pantheon, with gods and spirits from Buddhist, Taoist, historical, and animistic origins appearing separately and individually, often known in one region or community, or responsible for just a fragment or a particular mountain peak."

Deirdre Chetham has written for the National Geographic News Service, is executive director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the Harvard University Asia Center, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

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