China's coming flood: a 400-mile-long reservoir on the Yangtze River will drown forests and farms, driving more than a million people from their homes

International Wildlife, Sept-Oct, 1996 by Jeremy Schmidt

KUAN YUN LI, A SMALL FIGURE carrying a farmer's hoe in one hand and a basket on his back, made his precarious way along a narrow mountain trail. An herb collector, Kuan was on the lookout for medicinal plants. Stopping suddenly, so that I almost bumped into him, he slashed at the ground with his hoe, exposing a white root the size of a finger. "This," he said, "is Good for your heart."

Perhaps explained how, despite being nearly 60 years old, Kuan moved so easily through the canyons of central China. We were on a narrow ledge. Above, limestone walls loomed in the fog. Below, nothing but misty space. A slip of the foot could be fatal, but Kuan was comfortable walking over the slick clay. He has been negotiating dangers like this for most of his life, and he did it with equanimity. Yet when I met him he was a troubled man. A major disaster that threatened to destroy his way of life was fast approaching.

More than 160 kilometers (100 mi.) away, at Sandouping on the Yangtze River, work already had begun on China's biggest construction project since the Great Wall--Three Gorges Dam. Named for the series of canyons that it would flood, the dam is designed to create a reservoir 760 kilometers (400 mi.) long. The lake will drown the gorges and inundate hundreds of side valleys, including the one in which Kuan's family had lived since before the Ming Dynasty, which began in 1368.

The project is an expression of grand engineering dreams: It is the biggest concrete dam ever attempted and will include the world's biggest generating turbines and biggest lock system. More than 2 kilometers (1.2 mi.) long, it will stand 115 meters (377 ft.) above the current river level. Its primary purpose is to protect millions of people from devastating floods. Other objectives include irrigation, inland shipping and electrical generation.

The dam has aroused fierce domestic and international controversy. The World Bank, notorious for funding dam projects whether necessary or not, has refused this one. Construction giants Bechtel and Sulzer also have bowed out. Critics point to environmental threats (see box, page TK), economic concerns, unproven engineering concepts and human-rights issues. "It invites catastrophe to risk everything in one mammoth effort," says journalist Dai Qing, who spent 10 months in prison for publishing a book of expert opinions critical of the dam. She contends that smaller projects tailored to local needs can achieve the same benefits at less cost with less risk in a shorter time. The dam appears to be more an expression of pride than of practicality-a matter of China forcing it through no matter what the experts say.

An estimated 1.2 million people will lose their homes beneath the reservoirs mounting waters. In a country already overcrowded, plans for resettlement are vague. Early relocation efforts have caused frustration and protest. "What can we do?" Kuan said when asked what he thought of this. He was both angry and fearful. "We have no choice," he said, voicing a sentiment we were to hear many times. "We can't tolerate it, but we can't change it."

It was to meet people like Kuan--to understand the local perspective--that photographer Ted Wood and I went to China. Our journey began in Chongqing, a city of 16 million perched on hills overlooking the junction of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers. More than 2,400 kilometers (1,500 mi.) from the ocean, Chongqing will become an inland seaport at the head of Three Gorges Lake after the dam gates close.

In preparation, the central district was undergoing a near-total rebuilding. Construction workers, including prison laborers with shaved heads under police supervision, were busy tearing down the old neighborhoods of twisting alleys and vertiginous stone-stepped footpaths. They worked with crowbars, sledgehammers, shovels, picks, baskets balanced on bamboo carrying poles and handcarts. Using the same tools that built these old houses, the workers seemed to represent unchanging China. Yet behind them came the new China: an elevated freeway, new docks, tall office buildings and residential towers.

The old neighborhood in the path of the freeway seemed an unlikely place for nostalgia--cramped, dark and decayed, the buildings had been hastily rebuilt from the rubble of Japanese bombing during World War II. Water supply pipes, added later, ran along the surface. Sewers were nothing more than open, stone-lined trenches plunging toward the river.

Yet for residents, uncertainty and disruption were dubious improvements. "We have to be out of here in a few days, but no one's told us where we're going," said the owner of a noodle stand as he chopped pork with a heavy cleaver. His house was the last structure still standing on his side of the alley. Across from him, three elderly women had pulled wooden chairs onto the pavement, where they could knit and watch the demolition. They had lived in that part of town all their lives, and they recounted for us the destruction of what they called the Japanese War.