Re <<Dark Side of China>>
nytimes.com
After the Flood
Aug. 31, 2003
Since the end of imperial rule nearly a century ago, Chinese leaders of all kinds -- democrats and dictators, Nationalists and Communists, technocrats and dreamers -- have shared a single, colossal engineering ambition: to dam the mighty Yangtze River. In June, 84 years after Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese Nationalist leader, first proposed locating the dam downstream of the scenic Three Gorges, sluice gates closed and the silt-laden waters of the world's third-longest river began filling the cavernous gap between a series of sheer cliffs to form the biggest reservoir in the world.
Three Gorges Dam demands superlatives: it is the world's largest dam, in terms of water displacement, flood control and power generation; the Itaipu Dam bordering Paraguay and Brazil has been relegated to second place. Its edifice stretches about a mile and a half across the Yangtze near Yichang, in Hubei province, five times the span of the Hoover Dam. When completed in 2009, the dam's 26 turbines should produce 84.68 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year, about a tenth of China's needs.
If it works as advertised, the dam could restrain the summer swells that regularly inundate the cities and towns along the lower Yangtze, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives. Yet the costs are also enormous, even beyond the $25 billion price tag. The reservoir now stretches for about 400 miles, roughly the length of Lake Superior. It has submerged scores of cities and towns, some of which were thriving centers of commerce and culture more than 2,000 years ago. At least 1.3 million people will have to abandon their homes. Half that number have been moved already. The government has spent billions of dollars on relocation, but the effort has been plagued by corruption, and some of those affected say promises of a better life remain unfulfilled.
Authorities hurried to move to safety the most important cultural relics, like the tomb of Liu Bei, king of the Shu state, and the temple of the Han Dynasty general Zhang Fei. But there was no time or money to rescue thousands of other artifacts, now lost. And critics warn of the potential for an environmental disaster, as sewage, silt and industrial waste, much of it dumped untreated into the river, clog the reservoir.
Whatever the dam's value in terms of profit and loss, it is hard not to be stunned by the sheer visual transformation that it has brought to the region. Hardscrabble towns that had been left to rot in the decadelong wait for the dam have been quietly buried by the rising tide. The 'placid lake' promised in a poem by Mao Zedong has replaced muddy rapids. The river's banks were once stripped of vegetation; now its waters lap forested highlands.
James Whitlow Delano, a freelance photographer based in Tokyo, made a photographic record of the area before and after the waters rose. The experience, he says, left him with conflicting emotions. New towns along the river lack the vigor of the port cities they have replaced. But at the same time, he says, he was struck by the tranquillity of the new landscape. |
