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  • Day 8

    Ambience

    October 11, 2019 in China ⋅ ☁️ 68 °F

    You might say that we have half a day off today. There are no excursions planned for this morning, and we will stay onboard the ship until we reach the Three Gorges this afternoon. On this fallow day I am aware of some intangibles, the general atmosphere you encounter when cruising down the Yangtze River. One of those intangibles is the humidity. We have found temperatures between 60 and 88 degrees Fahrenheit, but whatever the temperature, the humidity has been very high. There is a constant mugginess to the air, morning, noon or night. The air is never completely clear. There may be exceptional days when low humidity and bright sunshine bring a diamond clear day, but so far on our trip we have not seen one. Humidity and pollution combine to give the air a constant fogginess.

    Up to this point we have been on the lower Yangtze, where the land is flat and the river is busy with industrial ships, most carrying coal to China’s many coal-fired electricity producers. Over 70% of China’s electricity is still produced by coal. The use of this fossil fuel is one of the reasons for the high level of air pollution here. It seems that in China every building, bridge, sign, tower, and temple gleams with exterior lighting at night (and sometimes even throughout the day). Eastern China does not have dark skies, so it would not be a good place for astronomy. Today we are leaving the coastal plain and entering the foothills. Already I see fewer ships on the river. This is not to say our boat has no company on the waters, but merely that the river is not crowded as it has been since we left Wuhan. Beautiful mountains are beginning to show in the pre-dawn darkness. The mountains here are not the gently rising, rounded hills of the Appalachians, though. They are sharply pointed bumps on the terrain, steep, abrupt vertical spikes. The tops of distant ridges do not appear as undulating hills, but rather as jagged, black edges ripped from the sky by the hand of a giant. Becoming even more extreme as one heads west, the spiky quality increases until one reaches the mountains of Guilin, pure vertical spires pointing toward heaven. John Denver, in his song “Country Roads” speaks of the rounded hills of the Appalachians as a “Mountain Mama.” If that is so, then the abrupt spikes of the Tian Ji mountains definitely have a certain male-ness about them.

    We are going through the Xiling lock, so I’ll step outside to take some photos and check back later.
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