We docked early in the morning and took a shuttle bus to Baidi Town, which houses the Baidi temple, which many think remembers Liu Bei, one of the emperors of the three kingdoms. To get there we had to cross a walkway bridge which was recently built after the Three Gorges Dam started raising the water level. My understanding is this temple honors the place where the emperor turned his sons over to his strategist. The strategist had recommended that the emperor delay any war when he wanted more territory, but the emperor ignored him, and lost. On his deathbed he turned his young sons over to the strategist. The site actually honors Baidi, a much earlier emperor of this area.
We boarded the buses in the relocation town (the original city – as are many – are under water), but the city decided to relocate the old town gate to higher levels. From this point you’ll see a “bathtub”ring around the river as the level goes up to the full 175m in the winter after the rainy season, but the drop the level in the late spring to prepare to capture the floods.
Of course, at each stop we make our way past many vendors. The government encourages this since it allows the people displaced by the Three Gorges Project to earn a living. Some of the stands are food I would eat like fruit… others perhaps not. Look for the photo of the stand selling roasted baby birds and tongues.
Finally, I tried to capture some scenes of Chinese people at work, and the bus window photo is in there for me to remember the feeling of my heart hitting my throat as the driver reached to answer his cell phone at that exact moment.
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