Farther downstream, Zigui town was the birthplace of the poet Qu Yuan, whose suicide a couple of millennia ago is commemorated throughout China by dragon-boat races. This is where Xiling, the longest and traditionally most treacherous of the Three Gorges, begins.
"The Xintan Shoal" by Su Shi (Song dynasty)
"Our flat boat skirts the winding mountains;
Astonished we are by the approaching scenery.
The white waves surge across the river,
Rising and falling like snow descending from the sky.
Each wave being higher than the preceding one,
All fall onto the depressed riverbed.
Small fish disperse and then assemble,
Appearing and disappearing as if in boiling water.
The cormorants dare not dive into the river,
They one fly across it, flapping their light wings.
The egrets wade in the shallows, slim and agile,
But sometimes they cannot stand steady.
As for people aboard the small boat,
No one dares display poor oarsmanship.
To the temple shore they go to pray for safety."
The scenery hasn't changed since that time, but the rocks, rapids and trackers that used to plague this gorge have gone, and your boat will pass with ease, sailing on to a number of smaller gorges, some with splendid names - Sword and Book, Ox Liver and Horse Lung - suggested by their rock formations. Another of these, Huang Mao Xia, the Yellow Cat Gorge, marks the future site of the monstrous Three Gorges Dam, due for completion around 2009. Past here are the sheer cliffs and shifting currents of Nanjin Pass, and after that the broad gentle plain above Gezhouba, an enormous complex of dams, power plants, locks and floodgates. The boat squeezes through the lock, which can take some time, before docking in Yichang.
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