Yangtze River Cruise
Tours with Laurus Travel
Rising in the Tanggula Mountains in west-central
China, the Yangtze River flows southeast before turning northeast and then
generally east across south-central and east-central China to the East
China Sea near Shanghai. It is known as the Jinsha in its upper course and
Changjiang (meaning long river in Chinese) in the lower reaches. It is the
world’s third longest river, 3,915 mi (6,300 km) long, after the Nile and
the Amazon. Its chief tributaries are the Yalong, Min, Jialing, Han, and
Wu rivers. Several large cities, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, and
Chongqing, lie in the river’s basin, which is known as the granary of
China. Large ships can sail to Wuhan, and smaller vessels can reach
Yichang; it becomes harder to navigate above Yichang because of the gorges
that occur between Chongqing and Yichang. Work on the Three Gorges Dam
project - first discussed in the 1920s and promoted in the 1950s by Mao
Zedong - was inaugurated in 1993; the dam was completed in 2006. Located
west of Yichang, it will enable freighters to navigate 1,400 mi (2,250 km)
inland from the East China Sea to Chongqing.
The most impressive section of the Yangtze is the
Three Gorges, which has inspired numerous Chinese poets and painters over
the centuries. Due to popular demand, many of our tour packages include a
3 or 4 day cruise on the Yangtze River, either going upstream or
downstream. Cruising downstream used to be much faster than sailing
downstream but since the completion of the Yangtze River dams near Yichang
the difference has become insignificant.
 The
scenery certainly is the same going either direction. Laurus Travel has
been a longtime partner with New York-based Victoria Cruises and we
choose the company primarily for its high quality that other Yangtze
cruise operators can't match.
Three Gorges
Dam
"The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest
electricity-generating plant of any kind. The dam body was finished in
2006 and all of the originally planned dam components of the project were
completed on October 30, 2008, when the 26th generator was brought into
commercial operation. Currently, it contains 32 main generators, each with
a capacity of 700 MW. An item from the original design yet to be finished
is a planned ship lift. Six additional generators in the underground power
plant are being installed and are not expected to become fully operational
until around 2011. The total electric generating capacity of the dam will
then reach 22,500 MW.
The project produces hydroelectricity,
increases the river's navigation capacity, and reduces the potential for
floods downstream by providing flood storage space. As of September 2009,
the dam has generated 348.4 TWh of electricity, covering more than one
third of its project cost.
 The
project management and the Chinese state regard the project as a historic
engineering, social and economic success, a breakthrough in the design of
large turbines, and a move toward the reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions. However, the dam has also flooded archaeological and cultural
sites and displaced some 1.24 million people, and is causing significant
ecological changes, including an increased risk of landslides. The
building of the dam has been a controversial topic both in China and
abroad."
--- Text from wikipedia.org,
used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Visit
Wikimedia Foundation for additional information.
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