The Three Gorges Dam Project

Around 10-30pm on the second evening of the cruise, we arrived at the Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world. I had only visited Hoover Dam a few years ago, and whilst it sounds a bit sad found it very impressive and fascinating. This was, not surprisingly given its China, on a far grander scale and more impressive.

The Dam site consists of a series of locks, an elevator currently being built which will ultimately transport smaller freight boats and the dam itself. In the evening we went through the five locks, descending 22 metres in each and therefore 110 in total. Most people, like me, watched us go through the first lock (about 40 mins) and enter the second lock, and then retired to bar or bed.

In the morning we awoke to a mooring just down from the dam and were transported by bus to get a closer view of locks and dam. Those facts (that i can remember as there were a lot) were i think:

- built over 17 years, with a couple more to go before the elevator is complete;
- cost of 28bn dollars, 45% of which was the cost of resettling 1.4m people;
- at the height of construction, 30,000 people worked on the site; currently 2,000;
- it produces 5% of China's power requirement;
- its the largest of its kind in the world.