Eric's Beijing Diary

Reading again from John Wesley Powell:

"We make ten miles and a half, and camp among the rocks, on the right. We have had rain, from time to time, all day, and have been thoroughly drenched and chilled; but between showers the sun shines with great power, and the mercury in our thermometer stands at 115 degrees, so that we have rapid changes from great extremes, which are very disagreeable. It is especially cold in the rain tonight. The little canvas we have is rotten and useless; the rubber ponchos, with which we started from Green River City, have all been lost; more than half the party is without hats, and not one of us has an entire suit of clothes, and we have not a blanket apiece. So we gather drift wood, and build a fire; but after supper the rain, coming down in torrents, extinguishes it, and we sit up all night, on the rocks, shivering, and are more exhausted by the night's discomfort than by the day's toil."

Ever had a day like that? Ever had a life like that? Life is a symphony--a balance between tension and rest. The problem, for many of us, is that we tend to regard the rest spots in our lives as "extra" space. All too soon, these rest spots get filled up with activity and commitments, our tension and rest balance becomes tension, tension, tension, and before we know it, the symphony of our lives has become a rock concert. So how do we deal with this? It's a simple matter of making choices. This morning, a group from the boat took a bus at 6:30 am and went to get a special top side view of the dam. They got back at 10 am, just in time for the ship to leave. The tour guide invited me to go along, but I turned down the opportunity. I'm too busy taking it easy. I'll do it some other time when I don't have so much relaxing to do.

The cruise ship I am on (Galaxy 1) is very much like a five story building floating down the river. Actually, it would be more accurate to say four story building, because the fifth deck is really a sun deck on the roof of the fourth deck. The first deck houses the lobby and crew's quarters, the dining hall is on the second deck and the lounge and recreation center is on the fourth deck. My cabin on the third deck is very much like a small hotel room with two single beds instead of two double beds. I have a private bath and shower. One wall is a huge bay window facing the water. Quite a bit better view than those old port holes on the Himalaya. Actually, the whole architecture is different, because this is a river boat, not an ocean going vessel. I mention the Himalaya, because that is the last time I was on a cruise. In those days, we didn't board a ship just to take four days looking at scenery. We used ships to go from Point A to Point B. But in many ways it was the same thing. I was seven years old then, standing on the deck looking quite a ways down at the dock in Vancouver, British Columbia. A lot of fanfare in those days. They walked around and gave us each some paper streamers, which we were to throw to someone on shore. I threw mine to some kid standing on the dock below. I have no idea who he was, but for a short time we shared a paper streamer. Slowly, the ship edged out of the harbor, and the paper streamers broke one by one.

Those days are gone now. The Himalaya was owned by the P&O line, which ferried passengers back and forth between the various countries of the British Commonwealth for 100 years. In those days, rich folks would get a cabin on the port side going out to India so that they could view the scenery going around the southern tip of Africa, and they would get a cabin on the starboard side coming back, for the same reason. Hence the acronym POSH (Port Out, Starboard Home). But when ocean travel was replaced by air travel as the primary means of moving passengers overseas, all those old ships were sold to the Princess Cruise lines. The Himalaya is probably scrap metal by now.

Today we negotiated the locks of the massive Three Gorges Dam. The dam is not fully operational yet, but it is functioning, and beginning to fill. This has got to be one of the most gargantuan civil engineering projects in history. Perhaps that's too strong--the pyramids of Egypt would certainly be more impressive. But this thing really is huge. You can't really get a grasp of it except, perhaps, from the air. It is to big to see in its entirety from any one location.

Labels: Infrastructure, Summer 2004, Three Gorges