DILUVIAL AND DELUSIONAL:

Three Gorges: A River Runs Through It, for Better or Worse (Mary Beth Sheridan, 10/07/07, Washington Post)

The Three Gorges Dam is aimed at satisfying that appetite for energy. When finished, it will generate 20 times as much electricity as the Hoover Dam, offsetting some of the need for the smelly, polluting coal. Chinese authorities also hope it will help control deadly floods on the world's third-longest river.

After lunch, we boarded a bus to view the concrete behemoth. The dam is typically described in superlatives: It's one of the biggest public works projects in history, longer than the Brooklyn Bridge and higher than the Washington Monument.

But when we finally reached it, we must have looked a little underwhelmed.

"Maybe it's a little different from your mind?" fretted our Chinese guide, Stephen.

Perhaps it was the smog. But the dam looked like -- a big dam.

If the dam's appearance wasn't as dramatic as we'd expected, though, its impact is huge. As our guides explained, the government is relocating almost 1.3 million people from towns submerged by the rising waters. Red signs on the riverbanks mark 175 meters (574 feet), the depth of the reservoir when the project is finished.

Along the Yangtze, clusters of sterile white apartment buildings are rising for the displaced. Traditional market towns have vanished. At one point, we glided by a graceful old wooden temple at the river's edge.

"In 2009, that will be underwater," the guide said.

It was difficult to get a sense of the human cost of such forced dislocation. Our Chinese guides shrugged it off, saying only the elderly objected. They insisted that younger residents were happy to be part of China's boom and welcomed their bigger, government-built apartments, with plumbing and access to supermarkets.

"They have wide houses," explained Annie, a 23-year-old guide in a bomber jacket emblazoned with "London" who led us through some Luray-like caverns near the riverside city of Fengdu.

"They have a new future -- and a new TV."

Deirdre Chetham, author of "Before the Deluge: The Disappearing World of the Yangtze's Three Gorges," said many young people in the cities and large towns did indeed welcome the move. Though the old towns had architecturally interesting old quarters, they also were filled with crowded, Soviet-style concrete apartment buildings from the 1950s and '60s.

"It was very exciting to get a new apartment, pick a new stove, pick out wallpaper -- for those for whom it went well," Chetham said. But for rural families, the move was more traumatic.

"They lost the land they had tilled for generations," she said. "Large numbers of people were moved as far as 1,200 miles away."

Our guides' sanguine attitude was perhaps not surprising; they were all Communist Party "team members." They also cheerfully dismissed environmental concerns about the river, assuring us that endangered fish and birds were bouncing back. Asked about the gauzy air at the dam, Stephen emphasized: "Moisture! Not pollution."

Yet even the guides had to acknowledge the yawning gaps between Communist propaganda and the vibrant, Western-obsessed country we were observing.

One day a guide pointed to satellite dishes sprouting from a few farmers' houses. The government didn't allow them in urban areas, she explained, since residents might "learn the reality about the Chinese people" from English-language TV -- and rise up.

Another of the "team members" was asked about China's economic system.

"Only the government thinks we are socialist," he confessed.
East Meets East

The East King offered a glimpse of the increasingly capitalist China.

The four-story ship could hold 192 passengers, all in outside cabins with large windows, TVs, comfortable beds and decent-size bathrooms. Its spa offered foot rubs and "aromatic rose massages," and the bar served Australian wines. Onboard activities included a dumpling-cooking class and the inevitable karaoke. Crew members were unfailingly polite.

Food was plentiful. A breakfast buffet featured offerings from toast and eggs to Chinese noodles; dinner brought a procession of Chinese dishes, such as steamed buns with ground pork, chicken in lemon sauce, sweet-and-sour fish, and a variety of vegetables (including a spectacular dish of radishes in orange sauce).

There were occasional lapses. At lunch, the chefs did their best imitation of American food, which is how I came to be served a nice chicken cordon bleu -- slathered with tartar sauce.

But the ships have come a long way from the days when rats shared the cabins. And in recent years, the Chinese have done some cleanup on the Yangtze. Though it's still polluted, I spotted none of the river-borne trash common in the past. (And not a single floating body, which my Beijing-based friend Ed had sworn was standard.)

That's not to say the cruise is as dramatic as it once was. Chetham, who has been visiting the Yangtze for more than 20 years, said the scenery still resembled an old Chinese painting, but "it's as though the bottom was cut off." Among the 40 passengers on our cruise -- Americans, Canadians, Europeans and a few Chinese -- were some San Francisco residents who recalled the cliffs soaring higher when they'd visited pre-dam. Even one of the shipboard guides admitted sadly, "So many beautiful sceneries have been flooded away."