Taming the river dragon: can China's Three Gorges Dam harness the Yangtze River? - Special Report

0 Comments | Current Events, March 15, 2002

HOW DO YOU TAME A DRAGON?

If the dragon is China's powerful, dangerous, and unpredictable Yangtze (YANG-TSEE) River, you can try to tame it by building the world's most powerful dam. Begun in 1994 and due to be completed in 2009 at a cost estimated at more than $24 billion, the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze is China's greatest construction project since work began on the Great Wall 2,300 years ago. To complete the dam on time, about 25,000 workers are working 24 hours a day in three shifts.

When completed, the Three Gorges Dam will stand about 607 feet high and stretch more than a mile across the mighty river. There are taller dams and wider ones, but no dam in the world will generate more power. At peak load, 26 turbines, weighing 400 tons each, the largest ever built, are expected to generate 18,200 megawatts of electricity--equivalent to the output of 18 nuclear power plants. Water turbines are machines that convert the power of rushing water into electricity.

Nothing but the world's most powerful dam will do, say China's leaders, to tame the raw power of the Yangtze, called Chang Jiang, or "long river," by most people in China.

The Course of the Yangtze

On maps, and from space, the Yangtze looks much like the twisting and burning dragon it has represented in legend. Its snakelike tail curls out of the deep ice on Tibet's high plateau beneath the snowcapped peaks of the Kunlun Mountains. From there the river flows south through Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and then east across central China for 3,964 miles, making it the world's third longest river.

On its way out of Tibet, the Yangtze courses wildly through deep chasms in remote areas still largely unexplored and uncharted. Then, gathering force from monsoon rains and rushing tributaries (streams or rivers that feed into a larger river), it widens as it moves past rugged mountains, lush with moss and small trees and shrouded with mist likened by poets to dragons' breath.

When it reaches central China, the Yangtze flows through rich farmland. There, the river changes to a dull red color (because of the iron-rich soft) and then turns chocolate-brown from the runoff of land that has been fertilized and farmed for thousands of years.

The Three Gorges

The Three Gorges Dam is named for three spectacular gorges, or steep canyons, in central China. (See map.) The gorges are an impressive sight--stretching more than 125 miles and ranging from 100 to 300 yards in width, with cliffs rising sharply on each side. Their dramatic beauty has drawn visitors for thousands of years. Chinese artists have captured the gorges in paintings, and poets have written poems about their beauty, even carving poems of praise into the cliffs.

The three gorges are said to have been created by a Chinese folk hero named Yu, who--with the help of dragons--moved around China's hills and valleys draining the land to make it habitable for humans.

The raging Yangtze, after plunging through the gorges, calms down and widens, flowing its last 1,000 miles more slowly before reaching the East China Sea near the great port city of Shanghai.

More Than Just a River

The Yangtze is much more than a river, even a great river, to the Chinese. It is the lifeblood of China.

Yangtze waters irrigate the "land of fish and rice," the great central valley where half of China's food is grown. Along the river's banks, every patch of ground is farmed as far as the eye can see. On the steep mountainsides, farmers plant sweet potatoes, sugar cane, and orange trees.

The Yangtze is also at the heart of China's trade and commerce. Night and day, boat traffic plies the river constantly to and from Shanghai and the sea. Yangtze water irrigates more than a third of China's farms and carries much of the internal waterborne trade of China.

The Yangtze, especially in the Three Gorges region, is also considered the cradle of China's 4,000-year-old civilization. Countless millions of Chinese have lived, worked, fought, and died along its banks. Archaeologists say the Three Gorges area contains the only complete archaeological records of successive ruling dynasties dating back to prehistory.

Although the Yangtze has been a boon to Chinese life and civilization throughout the ages, it has also been a killer. The Yangtze has repeatedly overflowed with a "raw, naked, and cruel power," sweeping whole villages and towns to destruction. In the 20th century, catastrophic floods hit villages and towns along the Yangtze four times between 1931 and 1954. In 1931, some 3.7 million people died from drowning, disease, or starvation caused by the flooding. In 1954, some 30,000 people perished and 19 million others lost their homes in violent flooding. Massive floods in 1998 killed more than 3,000.

Century-Old Dream

A dam across the Yangtze had been a dream of leaders of China for nearly 100 years. Not only would such a dam produce the massive electrical power needed to run China's growing economy, but it would also allow humans to regulate the river's flow, thus controlling the flooding that has taken so many lives.