S. and I are now comfortably ensconced in the Jade Suite of the MV Yangzi Explorer with the intention of cruising the four hundred miles or so between Yichang (population circa four million) and Chongqing (population seven million).  Yichang I’m sure you’ve never heard of, but Chongqing you may know as Chunking which it used to be before the Chicoms started tinkering with the names of their towns.  I also remember Chunking as the only Chinese food ever to cross our family table.  It was the name brand of the boxed chow mein that my mom got at the local grocery.

Let’s deal with the name thing first.  When the first missionaries arrived in the area about five hundred years ago and asked, “what’s the name of the river”, the locals thought they were asking about a small tributary of the river that they knew as Chang Jiang, which translates literally as long river.  The small tributary was indeed named Yangtze or Yangzi, whichever you prefer.  The emissaries of the lord were certain that they had it right and stubbornly refused to call the river anything other than Yangtze/Yangzi.  Actually, the locals have different names for the river according to where they be and what the river is doing around them. I don’t know the Chinese, but all of the names have something like “long, roaring, or peaceful” in them.

Of course, it’s not the name that’s important.  It’s the reality.  The Yangzi is 3915 miles in length arising in the mountains of Tibet and finally emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai.  If you’re a stickler for detail, it’s third in length to the Amazon and the Nile, but as my Chinese sources are quick to suggest, it is first in importance.  Hmmm.  Not exactly sure how you measure that, but I’ll go along with it anyway.  One thing for sure is that it touches a lot of peeps.  In fact, the Yangzi River basin is home to about ten percent of the world’s population and about forty percent of China’s citizens call it home.  Some five hundred million in all.

It’s also home to some of the worlds most populous and important cities both now and in history.  Many you will have not have heard of them and, in fact,  some can’t be found on most western maps.  Some will seem vaguely familiar. Today, we sailed by what our guide referred to as a country village.  It’s population is five hundred thousand and probably more by now.  Let me tick off a few others.  Let’s start with Shanghai with a population of about nineteen billion, most of whom were at Expo 2010 last Friday when we were there.  The ones that weren’t at the Expo were at Wu Gardens eating BBQ’d Sparrows, bad smelling fish, and mystery meat balls on a stick.  Then there’s Nanjing, which you would probably know as Nanking, as in The Rape of Nanking.  It’s reported population is five million five hundred thousand, but you never know.  What I do know is that Nanjing is where Chang Kai Shek (CKS) threw in the towel to the Japanese under the misbegotten theory that the Japanese would respect their surrender.  Fat chance.  The Japanese brutally dispatched about four hundred thousand men, women, children, and even babies to send a strong message to the rest of China.  Interestingly, after we dropped Fat Boy 1 and 2 on Japan in 1945,  CKS designated Nanjing as the capital of China.

Then there is Wuhan, of which I know nothing except that about eight million peeps call it home, Badong, a village of a half million.  Yungyang, two million.  Wanzhou, three million, and Fengdu, where we were today.  This is an interesting place on several levels.  First, it is an example of villages alongside the Yangzi that were subsumed by the rising waters of the post-Three Gorges Dam era.  The population, then as now is either one or seven hundred thousand depending on which boundaries you subscribe to.  It seems that the definitions of village, town, city, urban area, metropolitan area, and municipality are somewhat fuzzy here, but that’s not important to my point.  My point is that at least one hundred thousand citizens woke up one morning and were told by their government that they had to move to higher ground, or another town, or even another province, and they did.  Can you imagine that in the good old US of A?  We’d be fighting Supreme Court cases about it for the next twenty years.  We visited the “new” Fengdu as well as a “relocation village about ten km down the road.  We visited a Chinese family in their “relocation house” and they did a good job supporting the governments somewhat absurd position that this was good for everyone and there are only happy campers all around.  More on Chinese housing later.

Also in our stretch of the river is Fuling, population five hundred thousand, that I can’t even find on the Chinese map that I bought today from a street vendor.  Then there is the grandaddy of all Yangzi river towns, Chongqing.  It’s population is either seven million or thirty-two million (see comment on definitions above).  It literally goes on for ever.  One high rise apartment after another, one smoke stack after another and another on into the horizon.  Everyone who oughta know says it’s the largest city in China, which makes it the largest city in the world, and, based on what I saw, I’m not going to argue with them.  Chongqing, however, only rates two pages in my new Eyewitness guide and about the same in Fodors.  That ought to dispel any idea that we know anything about China.

I’m convinced this is where pollution comes to retire.  It’s on you like a wet blanket all the time.  I asked if there were any sunny days, and got blank looks in response.  But they do have a museum for General Joe Stillwell here.  Roosevelt sent Stillwell to China in 1942 to serve as Commander of the US forces in China and as CKS’s Chief of Staff.  Once again, America won the battle but lost the war (figuratively, I mean).  Stillwell, the forces of CKS, and his temporary ally Mao Zedong ultimately defeated the Japanese, but we, smart guys that we are,  backed the wrong guy  when we continued to support CKS in his struggle against Mao.  It is said by the clever academes who study this kind of stuff, that we literally drove Mao into the arms of the Russians.  Yikes.  Looks like we ought to learn.

S.and I have covered only about ten percent of the river on our cruise, but we’ve been exposed briefly to much more of Chinese culture history and challenges.  I haven’t talked much about the Three Gorges Dam project herein as I plan on a short separate piece on it.  Suffice it to say that the scale of the project, like so many other things here in China is hard to comprehend.

I know enough now to know that I will never understand the importance of the Yangzi (or Yangtze, or Chang Jiang, or Long River) to China, but I do have some enhanced appreciation what happens when the immutable forces of nature come in conflict with the desires of man.