YANGTZE RIVER, CHINA - The sky is a brilliant blue, the wind clean and crisp and the China where National Guide Ju Hao works resembles the landscape we’re passing - a jumbled mix of the old and new, and a backdrop to a lifestyle that’s suddenly changing much too fast.
“It’s dramatic,” says Hao, sweeping his hand through the air for emphasis. “Yes …that’s definitely the word for it.”
The rolling hills of China’s Yangtze River valley provide the most graphic and concentrated evidence we’ve seen yet of the change that is modern China.
As far as we can see, there are crumbling old houses built hundreds of years ago and communist-era “flats” - apartments - set low against the hills. Behind them, and set higher, are sparkling new ferro-concrete relocation villages.
But there are no cars, and almost no people visible. Most of the “new villages” don’t have electricity or running water. And their residents remain farmers who head out each day to work the dramatically terraced fields that rise precipitously above the gorge.
It’s as if the new is fleeing the old, yet somehow remains tied to it. But it’s the red lines, and the accompanying signs that read “175 meters” that are perhaps the most sobering hint of the change that’s to come, for the lines and signage serve to warn passersby where the water will be next year when the reservoir of the massive Three Gorges Dam is finally full.
The surface of the water already has risen up and over the 150-meter mark. It’s odd to think that …as we move along the water’s surface …there are entire villages - even cities - far below us, down in the blackness, beyond the reach of the sun’s rays.
“It’s hard to imagine what’s happening in China” Hao said, reflecting upon his life.
Born in a centuries-old hutong - the narrow streets or alleys that are part of life in old Beijing. This one wasn’t too far from Tiananmen Square, meaning he grew up among the poorest of the poor.
His family shared their courtyard residence with seven other families - perhaps 35 people in all - in a space designed and built for a single family. There was no running water and only a single community bathroom that was literally just a hole in the ground.
“We were poor” Hao says. “Very poor.”
Even so, he says, “my earliest memories are very happy ones.” Hao recalls playing with other children as in the alleys as they waited for their parents to draw water each morning.
“We didn’t lock our doors - we didn’t have to,” says Hao. “Our dreams were simple. Any family having a bike, TV, radio or simply a sewing machine was envied.”
Changes Begin
The first hints of change came while Hao was in high school. Then, during his high school years Hao recalls the first glimmers of change.
