The Age
December 22, 2005

Villagers along the Yangtze are reluctantly leaving home, John Schauble reports from Fengdu. No one is under any illusions that life will be the same, let alone any better.

Fengdu: The writing, literally, is on the wall for Fengdu. This tired riverside city is famous for its proximity to a legendary abode of devils. But within three months Fengdu will become a ghost town – one of the dozens of cities, towns and villages to be abandoned and eventually inundated as the water rises to consume the spectacular Three Gorges on the Yangtze River. The message stencilled on hundreds of buildings throughout the town is simple – "Demolish", and then a date, October, 2002. Along with Fengdu and other ramshackle river towns, monuments and archaeological treasures along the Yangtze will sink beneath 175 metres of murky water. Many cities look as if they have been bombed as demolition teams cart away rubble in trucks. A new Fengdu has already risen high on the opposite bank of the river and the whole town must relocate by October. By the middle of next year the water level will reach 135 metres, inundating parts of the old town. Eventually it will rise to 175 metres and claim the lot. "We will have to move our business over to the other side," said one shopkeeper, who makes a tidy living selling drinks and icecreams to the hordes of tourists racing to catch a last glimpse of Three Gorges before they disappear. There is a fatalism about the future, but not much joy is expressed about the enormous project that Chinese leaders, from Sun Yat-sen onwards, have dreamt of completing. "There’s not much we can do about it now," the trader said. The signs along the riverbanks boasting that the dam will benefit the people and the country ring a little hollow at the local level. No one is under any illusions that life will be the same, let alone any better. The city on the opposite bank built to house 70,000 people is a mix of high-rise apartments and the bland "white bathroom tile” architecture seen across China.