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Our Cruise would start from a town called Yi-Chang, a city of 4 million people. Our tour guide was so proud as he informed us his city has been modern for five years. As we entered the ship, our passports were carefully checked. We were serenaded by a band, and handed a damp warm towel to clean our hands. On Day one, the itinerary listed Taiji morning exercises, at 7:30...we never got up in time for that. The shore excursion was to a Dam site. Later in the day there was a Chinese bottle painting demonstration. It was fascinating how they could paint pictures inside a bottle with a small hole at the top.
Breakfast gave us a choice of fried eggs, and other Chinese dishes. Their sausage was unlike Americans sausage, it reminded us of spam. The eggs were fried in lots and lots of olive oil.
The Chinese dinner consisted of authentic Chinese food, things like sauteed Tufu, slice of fish, cubes of pork (fat) with peanuts, seafood shaomai, stir fried green beans, stir fried lettuce shoots, boiled ice burg lettuce, mild spicy stewed egg plant. Very different from Chinese food in the United States. They always had fresh fruit, and the desserts were 1" square pieces of cake. For Americans, that was just a sample.
On this day our shore excursion was cruising the Shen Nong Stream. (Ferry and Sampan Tour) We rode a ferry to get to the Sampan Tour. The Sampan tour consisted of several of us riding in a small boat for about 10 miles, the scenery was very nice. Then at a point in time, the water got shallow and the boat got stuck on a sand bar. Some Chinese men had it as their job to pull the boat, fully loaded with people, out of the sandbar. The men tied a rope around their bodies and attached it to the boat and walked and pulled the boat until they got it out of the sand bar. These men are called Boat Trackers. They wore cloth shoes or no shoes and walked across many rocks and much uneven ground. This is a service that was done for the general population in early Chinese times, however, now it is reserved for the tourist trade.
Each evening we had typical Chinese food for supper. One chinese delicacy is the DimSum. This did not go too well for the American palate, but the Chinese loved it. It was a piece of flat dough about 2" square with a filling inside. The corners were brought together, and the whole thing was dipped in boiling water. The Chinese people loved it.
The Yangtze River project actually flooded a whole town. A new one was built for people to go to. Many many people were very unhappy because the land they lived on had been in families for years and years, but apparently the project was much needed because of river flooding just got worse and worse each year.
We landed on Sunday at Chongqing for the day. The tour guide took us to a part of town where there appeared to us to be a street fair. Several blocks of shops with their "wares" set up outside. They were selling all kinds of things. One booth had thong sandals, there were hundreds of them. People were making things like sun catchers and jewelry, cooking things...like pigeons on a stick, selling things like Chinese fans...The food at the outdoor shops did not appeal to us, so we bought a bottle of water. And we had to be careful about what we bought, because we only had room for so much, and didn't want to ship back.
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