The Ice Flow

By Mary Hannington

"Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

"I know that there are some who say, ‘Let’s just get more money from the higher-income people, let’s just tax them some more', and I understand that’s popular in a lot of people’s minds. But just don’t forget that old Margaret Thatcher line, ‘Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.’ ”

Um, who is running out of money?

Mitt Romney is worth an estimated $190 - $250 million, and of this, $100 million went as a gift to his children and due to some absurd tax law he paid NO gift taxes on this amount. He estimates he’ll pay $3.23 million in federal taxes for 2011, on income of $20.9 million. Romney will have $5.7 million in itemized deductions, including $4 million donated to charity. The bulk of those charitable donations -$2.6 million - went to the Mormon Church.

Outside of the charitable donations $1.7 million was for other itemized deductions meaning property taxes, mortgage interest (if any), all manner of medical expenses and any state or local taxes that would be deducted from income.

Imagine spending almost 2 million on any of these things.

He DID make income, but no doubt that was wiped away by the HUGE amount of itemized deductions and you may call him charitable, but cynic that I am, I’m willing to bet his itemized deductions match what is allowable for his income. In other words, rather than pay a higher tax rate on income he can give the money to charitable groups he supports ie; the church and deduct it instead of paying the government in taxes.

You can estimate 2010 income here:

Romney's 2010 Income

Of course this is 2010, but it looks to me like you can get pretty close to $4 million if one looks at the income categories, speaker’s fees and imagines the amount of interest income (not disclosed) and I'm guessing here, but I imagine his yearly income doesn't fluctuate wildly.

Republicans argue that during earlier years as Romney earned his money he paid taxes at the regular rate, so it is now fair that he should pay less on the money he now earns off that money in the form of capital gains. Kinda like saying "Congratulations! You are now tremendously wealthy. You no longer need to give to your country."

Let’s look at how trickle down theory is working in this case. The Mormon church did well, but will they use the money to help people or to build another church? Or put it toward genealogy research so that they have a database of all our dead relatives and these families can finally be saved?

It is going to take some dough to get all the way back to Adam. Yes, that is their goal.

Romney’s kids did fantastic, but will they use their money to build factories and companies and put people to work? And how many people does Mitt currently employ?

Good accountants for sure!

No doubt lawyers…

And no doubt low-income positions abound in his household – maids, chefs, drivers, greensmen, pool boys, maybe a pilot or two, assistants and what not.

Not much tricklin’ going on here is there?

Meanwhile, the IRS is coming after Ms. 91, who makes .001% of what Mitt Romney does, for back taxes which she probably didn’t file because she has dementia and gets confused. Sure she owes them, but it’s a hardship for her to have to pay the pittance they are after.

And on another note...

Romney’s family traces back to the Pratt family in colonial times. His great grandfather Pratt had three wives and his great, great grandfather had four. This is one of the reasons for the Mexican heritage that Mitt so proudly claims. Both Pratt and Romney families fled, along with other Mormons, to Mexico because the good ole U S of A frowned on polygamy. His great, great grandfather on the Romney side also had two wives.

“…the kingdom of God cannot rise independent of Gentile nations until we produce, manufacture, and make every article of use, convenience or necessity among our people."

These two families are powerful white Mormon families, in both the church and in politics, which both trace back to colonial times and though some of them were born in Mexico it was not necessarily because they dug the place. They operated a Mexican Mission in Chihuahua in order to convert the Mexicans there. In other words, they were there to CHANGE the culture… not embrace it.

In a 1997 article in Time magazine it was estimated that the Mormon Church’s assets were worth 11 billion dollars. "The church owns many for-profit assets including agribusiness, media, insurance, travel and real estate. Deseret Management Corp., the company through which the church holds almost all its commercial assets, is one of the largest owners of farm and ranchland in the country, including 49 for-profit parcels in addition to the Deseret Ranch. Besides the Bonneville International chain and Beneficial Life, the church owns a 52% holding in ZCMI, Utah's largest department-store chain." These provide over $600 million in income, in addition to this, in 1996 the church brought in $5.2 billion in tithes.

Mitt's mamma used to sing American anthems and according to Mitt he LOVES this country, perhaps that is because his family and the church want to own it one day.

If I had $17 million after taxes and $100 million in the bank? My mind reels with the thoughts... I could build schools, I could give people housing, I could adopt children, I could, I could, I could... why don't they?

Posted by M. Hannington at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Mary Hannington

Reagan, Bush, the Tea Party have run this nation into the ground. What's it going to be like here when the oil runs dry, the population has no chance at an education, their homes are rotting, but there is not enough affordable housing, millions take to the streets, and die ("Yay! Serves ya right for not buying health insurance." they cry), and China is now providing the World with all the smart technology it needs.

Lady Liberty still stands there welcoming the poor, but they don't want to come here any more.

The leftist Occupodos have finally woken up, but they are angry with the left, which is where our reversal of fortunes lie, but in a reasoned way.

The right has left us with some pretty fucked up shit to clean up.

Here is something:

Constitution Free Zone

The article above, if you chose to skip it, describes a 100 mile swath around the entire country where the Homeland Security Department felt they needed to have the right to be able to search and detain ANYONE without a warrant. Perhaps this might be one reason the immigrants are absent… Or could the reason for these 100 mile zones be political.

Let your eyes rove around those zones. Seems to me they swallow up over half the purple and blue districts… Hmmm… how strange…

But phew! I’m glad I’m protected from those pesky criminals and immigrants flowing in from Lake Michigan or the ones crossing the Detroit River! Damn Canadians! They’ll try anything to smuggle their cheap goods into OUR country.

And those damn Brits sailing the Atlantic in order to sneak into the Hamptons to rob and pillage making up for years and YEARS of taxes on tea… Or, or the Japanese invading the West Coast in droves, floating in on old tires across the Pacific, I know, I know they used planes once, but times have changed.

It’s just… just such a frustrating problem!

But now comes Grover Norquist saying, “We need to cut taxes! People know how to spend their money more wisely than the government.”

I’m so excited!

Now, that our borders are safe, suddenly, all those old Enron CEOs will see the light, help collect the garbage, police our cities, educate our children, INSTEAD of buying gold shower curtains and stashing their cash in offshore accounts and FINALLY now will, with glee, invest their money in the sagging American economy. Yay!

They will take in new employees, give them healthcare, educate them, give them a place to live…

I’m sure they will follow the example of the saintly Samuel Slater (google the great man), who in 1793 came up with the kindly idea to offer his workers, housing, a company store and education. Hey, it came out of their paycheck and they had no other options in life, but they were fed right?

Wow! Utopia!

Maybe the wealthier of us could just let the poor work for free in exchange for room and board if they commit to a lifetime of service. Oh, we tried that it was called slavery, right?.

Is that illegal now?

And you’d think with all this opportunity the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free would be flooding in…

Foreign Workers Leaving US

Maybe Lady Liberty’s torch should be replaced with a wave bye-bye.

Christina Fernandez Kirchner won 37% more votes than her opponent in Argentina’s presidential race. Their GDP is up 9% and there has been a 30% rise in salaries. This is largely due to huge investments from China and partly Brazil, which took Argentina out of a 2009 recession.

Clearly Detroit’s borders are safe, but I don’t like the idea of being felt up by the FBI whenever they wish.

Buenos Aires aquí vengo!

I’ll turn the lights out before I go.

Reading: Jeffrey Sachs – Columbia University "The Price of Civilization"

Posted by M. Hannington at 09:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

The Chinese system of government has three main branches: the Communist Party of China (CPC), the State Council (also known as the “Central People’s Government”), and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China guarantees the legal power of the CPC, which exercises control over the state, military and media. Functionally, the government has three arms which carry out CPC-led policy: the National People’s Congress (NPC), the State Council, and the President.

The NPC meets once a year, usually in March, and, the most recent NPC elections of members (called “deputies”) took place in March 2008, at its first meeting of the new session, officially titled the “1st Plenum of the 11th National People’s Conference”. Terms of office for each delegate are 5 years, with the next likely change of office coming in March 2013. Deputies are elected to the National Congress by each of the 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities, 2 SARs (“Special Administrative Regions” - Hong Kong and Macau), and even the armed forces, over a three month period. The amount of delegates sent by each is related to the number of electors in each delegate’s constituency.

When the National Congress is not in session, legislative work is carried out by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC), which meets every couple of months. The NPCSC is made up of 150 members, elected by the NPC. The NPCSC decides how many NPC deputies are allotted to the NPC from each of the 35 electoral bodies just below the NPC (provinces, regions, etc.), but in any case, the total number of deputies does not exceed 3,000. Furthermore, a minimum of 15 deputies come from provinces and autonomous regions with small populations and ethnic minorities have at least one deputy of their own in the NPC. The Chairman of the NPC is elected by the NPCSC.

The State Council is the chief administrator of the People’s Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier, and contains the heads of each governmental department and agency, falling under a few different categories - Ministries, Commissions, Organizations, Offices, and Institutions. A comprehensive list of all governmental bodies under the supervision of the State Council can be found here. The State Council also oversees the provincial governments, and maintains a relationship with top Communist Party leadership, as most State Council members are high-ranking Communist Party officials.

The State Council also has a Standing Committee, made up of the premier, four vice-premiers, five state councilors, and the secretary-general (not the same as the General Secretary of the Communist Party). The State Council meets once a month and its standing committee meets twice a week. The vice-premiers and state councilors are nominated by the premier, and appointed by the president with National People's Congress' (NPC) approval. The premier is nominated and appointed by the president with NPC approval. Incumbents may serve two successive five-year terms.

Most, but not all, positions of power within all branches of the Chinese government belong to members of the CPC. The CPC was founded in Shanghai in 1921, and, after fending off the invading Japanese and then defeating the Kuomintang (KMT) in a civil war, took power in 1949. In late September, 1949, the CPC along with a few other groups, held what was effectively, their first Constitutional Convention. On October 1, 1949, they proclaimed China a republic, and in 1954, had instituted the initial version of the “Constitution of the People’s Republic of China”, which guaranteed the legal power of the CPC.

The CPC is the largest political party in the world, with around 80 million members. The most powerful body within the CPC is the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which meets at least once every five years (a different body from the National People’s Congress). The next meeting should take place in late 2012 (as the last was October 19, 2007). The congress approves changes to the constitution, and elects (only a formality as positions are determined beforehand) both the Central Committee and the Politburo (officially called the “Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China” or “The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee”); subsequently the Politburo Standing Committee is elected. Currently, the Politburo Standing Committee has 9 members.

The Politburo meets once a month, and consists of just over 20 members. It wields a lot of power because many of its members hold power within the State Committee, and others are high ranking provincial officials. The Politburo Standing Committee meets once a week. This committee, the most powerful, most concentrated body of power in the CPC, has generally consisted of between 5 and 9 members, and its power has varied throughout the history of the republic; it was relatively weakened during the Cultural Revolution; later, many members were ousted by Deng Xiaopeng after their protests to the government’s response to the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989.

The PLA is the third branch of the Chinese government. It unifies all air, land, and sea military operations as well as a strategic missile program. It was established on August 1, 1927 (now called “PLA day”). The PLA has 3 million members, and the army has just over 2 million itself, making it the largest standing army in the world. Technically, the PLA falls under the CPC’s Central Military Commission, although it reports to two Central Military Commissions - one run by the state and another run by the CPC, with both usually having common leadership.

The Chinese electoral system holds both direct and indirect elections - at the village level, citizens vote directly for their representatives (to participate in “village councils”), and then, each successive level of elected official elects the next highest level. Therefore, most outcomes are predetermined, making such indirect elections a formality. At each level, and most especially at the provincial and national level, the CPC exercises a great deal of control over the outcome, allowing only party members, members of smaller parties, or non-party sympathizers to hold power. The divisions of power at the lower levels are complicated, and are typically based on how each area is divided - for example, if an urban area is divided into districts, then the officials who lead each district vote for the city’s mayor. If there is no such division, then it could be a direct election.

When I started researching this piece (mostly via wikipedia, the most accessible source of data on the internet, albeit confusing at times), I knew very little about the fundamental makeup of the Chinese government. I hope that, after reading this, you have learned as much as I have. As always, I am open to any corrections or modifications which can be justified and are brought to my attention.

Posted by Red Sox Steve at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Or the day Ms. 91 found out I could take pictures with my iPhone.
Or why aren't there pictures here?
Or on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
Or use this but for only two weeks because after that it will make your teeth brown.

By Mary Hannington

What? So much crap flies at me every day I need a crap racket, dodger or some sort of athletic equipment!

Ms. 91 doesn’t get the fact that even though there is a Slouchy, I’m still single. Eh, so be it.

Some picture Ms. 91!

She is a Democrat now and maybe she always was. She hangs out with black men and women, has gay friends, wears a low cut swimsuit in the YMCA pool that would make her husband, who would avert eyes to my teeny bikinis, blush (RIP). He was a quartermaster that was on one of the boats that took Okinawa and then became an engineer and a comptroller for a southern automotive plant.

I grew up in a household controlled by this conservative Scottish father whose own father ruled him with a strap. He was embarrassed by his daughter’s sexuality, couldn’t hide his shock when he opened the door once and found my date to be a black man and openly griped when I chose to live with a man unwed. He didn’t do a lot of parenting, not until much, much later in my life when we came to a meeting of the minds and we could talk about adult things like business and even sex.

A football rivalry was the real kicker. A way to take our aggressions out in a healthy manner.

He was a child of the 50’s - the world of the American Dream. Maybe he’d be dismayed with the state of the country today and the state of the GOP, but it is more likely that he’d still support that American Dream and those ideas and want it for his daughter, who sees that it is gone.

Ms. 91 on the other hand not only lived the American Dream, but she lived in the 60’s and in the moment (still does). She wore Muumuus and Earth shoes. She had an organic garden, a Zen garden and we both did our Yoga every day.

In the 70’s we shopped for me together and searched for the little known new designers and swore off Halston and Yves St. Laurent or Pierre Cardin that other girls might covet. I wore African style dresses in colorful cloth by Kenzo before he was KENZO and had an odd tattered looking tie-die number by some Danish designer whose name escapes, purple bikini jeans or green velvet, or the crushed purple velvet pants with the HUGE Famolare clogs.

And those bikini jeans weren’t worn with a thong peeking out. They exposed butt cracks that tiny panties couldn’t cover whenever a girl sat down.

It was wild and it was fun while it lasted.

Guru aches for it, I remember it fondly like one should and celebrate it every day in my mind’s eye. Things change and you can’t control the world, but I understand the obsession to try.

My parents made their nest egg and they left for the south again and I set off to make mine.

In the 80’s I was already a punk, having picked it up in a stint in London paid for with student loans and hanging out in the Detroit’s dive bars carousing with freaks my dad would have keeled over at had he opened the door to any of them. I studied Marxism and communist China, read the Guardian and sang songs about Anarchy. Then I got into American politics, which is still slapping me in the face.

I was a delegate for Kennedy – how’d that work out?

I had a chance to go to Parson’s for my Masters of Art with a man I deeply loved - Reagan conservatism and family values ramrodded that whole deal.

For a while it was good. I bought a big house filled it with stuff and along came Dubya and now the house and the stuff are all I have.

When I was fourteen I designed a house on a cliff overlooking the sea, no specific place, but within a train ride from New York City.

I always thought I’d get to that house some day.

I threw the blueprints away five years ago.

It will take an army to do what I need to do to get there. I’m it.

I get half a foot of mail a day, I’m suddenly the mother of 4 kittens and two cats, Ms. 91 goes to the Y three times a week and the only time I get a workout is in the locker room, I have a trademark filing deadline, a Groupon expiring, a class to be completed, bills to pay on time, no money in the bank and the stock market is plummeting, a dental consult, a blood lab and doctor’s appointment, a dinner out for Ms. 91 and my cousin Tom to plan, oh and my medical insurance expires in October, pictures to send to Ms. 91’s sis, plaster work that can’t be finished because the roof that I have had sealed TWICE still occasionally leaks which is why I can’t let the Groupon expire, I had to hire some help, which I can’t really afford, but I don’t have time to deal with it all and at least it is discounted, my garden is now full of weeds again and at least that is a Zen thing for me., the house needs painting and that means me on a cherry picker (maybe in the fall), I have pebble dashing (Just google it!) work to do on three sides of the house, my entire 2 ½ car garage is filled with props and the remains of a 6500 square foot studio and it seems I am now the proud owner of a giant cast iron fireplace that thank Buddha is on a furniture dolly because the damn thing weighs a ton!, the room I’m trying to restore upstairs is filled with props from the last three films and the steamer trunks I lent to the latest and the room I put everything I want to sell on Ebay and organized on shelves is quickly getting disorganized and the guys that helped me do this rewired a ceiling lamp that was in the way of a shelf, but could have easily been raised without rewiring, but in doing so knocked out most ALL of the ceiling lights in the upstairs bedrooms, which I was hoping to eventually rent out, the kittens are in a room that still has a computer desk that I no longer need or use and should sell, but see above, I long ago paid for a series of spa appointments that help me feel better about myself, but I don’t have time to go, I have Ms. 91’s china and crystal service for twelve, but since she LIVES in my dinning room it’s not likely I’m going to serve dinner to twelve people anytime soon, not to mention I have enough china and glassware for a boffo soirée anyways and I don’t need any of it and I just got an ambulance bill from the city for a trip Ms. 91 took 5 months ago!

She woke up one day and couldn’t move. Turned out she was fine.

There are two men that I dearly love in New York and one other that has apparently flown the coop that need me, but there is not much of ME left.

And truth be told I read the news, surveil what’s around me and that house on a cliff has become a jump off a cliff. I’m so scared about what our future looks like that I want my body to hit the rocks rather than see it.

My life is in the hands of Ms. 91 and a bunch of jokers in the White House and a governor, who looked a bunch of folks in the face and lied.

And I love you Speedy, but it is not MY regression. It’s this country’s. And it’s giving me some cement shoes to take me down with it. I be swimming with the fishes if the nonsense don’t stop. You were just a baby when Reagan was kicking my ass.

That was nothing compared to the current onslaught.

American Dream pshaw!

You two, my VG partners, want to change the world? I’m doing it. One kitten at a time. One Ms. 91 at a time. One more chunk of change to the IRS. One more walk to the store and less gas spent.

One more lettuce rind thrown into the composter.

Can I get a Serenity Prayer?

I laugh every time the union sends me a note. “Dear brother and sisters….” “Fraternally yours…” It’s a small world that doesn’t exist outside of those hallowed halls. And inside those halls are egos bigger than the affection for any brother or sister can bring down, but a love of self that, for whatever reason, means more than anything.

I’m just one small woman in a troubled city doing the best I can.

And I’m fucking tired.

Posted by M. Hannington at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Mary Hannington

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.

The reason is clear: We have an economy that increasingly rewards education and skills because of that education.

Come on people now! Smile on your brother. Everybody get together. Try to love one another right now.

When Rick Snyder (R) took office in Michigan he immediately cut spending on education and the film industry (we are unique, a union business that trains their own) and offered HUGE incentives to big business. So apparently “Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses…” no longer applies in this country. The film industry here, once a white boys club, increasingly embraced minorities and trained them. With a lack of support for the education of the inner city poor where can they possibly go but to lower income jobs?

A recently published 2009 study by Pew Research showed the drop in household wealth for Hispanics was a whopping 66%, while Blacks faired little better losing 53% of wealth over four years (2005-2009).

Click chart to enlarge

The percent of our revenue from business income is one of the lowest of any European and Asian society, those countries make closer to double the percent of GDP vs. the U.S.

Social Security = $865 Billion
Individual Income = $899 Billion
Corporate Income = $191 Billion

All of us came here from somewhere, the exception being native Indians, and benefitted from the ideas in Emma Lazurus' (born of Portuguese Jews) poem. And some very smart wealthy men (including the President) have said they would gladly pay higher taxes to keep her ideas, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, alive.

Click chart to enlarge

A Pew Center and CBO study named these as the main reason for a decline in U.S. financial standing:

▪ Revenue declines due to two recessions, separate from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003: 28%
▪ Defense spending increases: 15%
▪ Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003: 13%
▪ Increases in net interest: 11%
▪ Other non-defense spending: 10%
▪ Other tax cuts: 8%
▪ Obama Stimulus: 6%
▪ Medicare Part D: 2%
• Other reasons: 7%

I opened my film business in 1991 in Detroit, hiring crews of up to 30, employing four, plus reps in the Midwest and New York and summer interns, greatly improved a 6500 square foot studio, provided food for neighborhood down and outs and was bringing in business from all over the country. By 2005 most of the assets had been sold and what was once a high tech studio remained shuttered for over five years and the neighborhood declined.

This period represented a switch from a Democrat in the Governor’s office to a Republican one, but was mostly under a Clinton presidency. Under Grandholm (D) 2003-2011 the studio became a nursing school and the neighborhood thrived again. Young creatives moved to Detroit started high tech businesses like mine and I had more offers to work feature films than I could handle.

I rode out the first recession, but saw the second one coming as the automotives continued to spend, not on the future, but on the cash cow, the SUV. I shut it all down helping no one. Many of them now support the film industry and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is working to keep the city growing with a new incentive for employees to move downtown called “Live Detroit”.

A switch to smarter thinking about keeping cities vital and taking care of those in your own backyard.

From Crain’s Detroit Business:

“Here's how the incentives work: New homeowners can receive a $20,000 forgivable loan; new renters a $2,500 rental allowance (and $1,000 for the second year). In addition, existing renters will receive $1,000 for renewing a lease, and existing homeowners can receive matching funds of up to $5,000 for exterior improvements on projects of $10,000 or more.”

For me it’ll be back to high tech with the hope that the Republicans, who seem to always make a creative girl's life miserable, will realize after the terrible news from Norway that some of the Tea Party types they have aligned with will ruin this economy and send its poor and its huddled masses packing.

These are the member countries of the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on the chart above.

Click here

Posted by M. Hannington at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

Three Gorges Dam

Spending three days heading down the Yangtze River was serene and surreal: first, the Yangtze is the world's third longest river and connects inland cities like Chongqing and Wuhan to Shanghai by water; second, the wonder of the Three Gorges - some of Mother Nature's most remarkable work has created massive and deep openings in the terrain, and a powerful turquoise waterway abuts steep, tall rock faces and mountains that seem to go as high as the sky; and, last but not least, our destination was one of China's most significant achievements to date - the Three Gorges Dam.

We disembarked from the cruise at Yichang (population 4m), and boarded busses for the short trip to the dam. Approaching the dam was like approaching an amusement park. There was a large pavilion we all had to enter where we snaked around the guideropes, making our way from the ticket window through security and onto other busses that would take us around this massive complex. Security was tight, and visitors were only allowed off the bus in certain areas.

As the bus started away towards our first destination, what I saw through the window was in sharp contrast to the natural beauty that surrounded me for the previous half week. Gray, almost dingy looking structures were in my proximity, while massive powerlines headed off into the distance. The project is an example of function over form, and NOT the other way around. The first part of the complex we passed was the series of locks which handle all the water traffic.

The locks are a series of four discrete chambers which are drained and flooded to either lower or raise a ship as it passes through the dam. Passing through each lock takes around an hour, and engineers are now in the process of constructing a ship elevator. This structure, which is much more complex, is a single chamber which is filled with water, then raised and lowered. As you could probably guess, the chamber is extremely heavy, but will also allow ships to pass through the dam more quickly - 30-40 minutes, as opposed to nearly 4 hours.

We passed the locks and headed for the best place to view the entire site, Tanzi Ridge. Tanzi Ridge is about 800 feet above sealevel, located on the strip of land between the dam and the locks, and from here you can see off in every direction. There are various artifacts and monuments here related to the dam's history, and a small building called "Three Gorges Project Model Room" that houses a model of the dam.

We spent an hour here before heading down to another viewing area, where we could see the huge dam. Above the waterline, a massive concrete wall has created a reservoir upriver. Thousands of square kilometers of land have been flooded - in some areas the water level has risen 20 feet - creating what some refer to as a lake, between Yichang and Chongqing. Flooding the river between Yichang and Chongqing allows larger ships to travel all the way to Chongqing, through the deeper water. This will increase upriver waterborne traffic and transform the significance of Chongqing as a shipping hub. The other function this part of the dam serves is to control the flow of water and silt downriver, all the way to Shanghai. Silt buildup is a byproduct of halting the flow of such a massive body of water - it changes the ecological makeup of the river and can even cause ships to unwittingly run aground. Dam operators open the dam very carefully from time to time, to allow water and silt to flow downriver.

Energy generation takes place below the waterline, according to one law: gravity. Each of the 26 turbines (also called generators) sit at the end of long descending tunnels. Water flows down each tunnel, spins the turbines, and electricity is created. The turbines weren't cheap: the Chinese paid $150 million for each one. The science behind hydroelectric power generation is relatively uncomplicated - falling water increases its pressure, turning the generator's rotor very quickly; electromagnets are attached to the rotor, housed in coils of copper wire, called "stators". Electrons flow from the stator coils as the rotor spins the magnets. This electricity can then be stepped up in voltage and sent over transmission lines.

Throughout the 20th century, various Chinese leaders dating back to Sun Yat-sen proposed the idea of a dam on the Yangtze. Because of political and social instability, and economic crises, plans couldn't be married to action until the late 1980s. During a 1992 meeting of the National People's Congress, overwhelming approval was given for construction, and before the end of 1994 construction on the dam had started.

This project has been a massive, risky, dangerous and long undertaking - over 1 million upriver residents had to be relocated due to rising water levels. In some cases, families who had lived along the shores of the Yangtze for centuries were uprooted for the first time. In other instances, new cities were constructed either at a higher elevation or directly across the river. In at least one case, a high wall was constructed to protect a city from rising floodwaters.

Various sources estimate the number of workers involved in construction to be anywhere from 20,000 to 250,000, and it has taken them about 15 years to complete the dam (it is fully functional, but the Chinese have yet to complete the ship elevator). The total cost of the project is somewhere around $25 billion - hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of cement were used, hundreds of thousands of tons of steel as well, and the cubic yards of earth that had to be moved was in the hundreds of millions. The cranes used on the project were the tallest in the world, the number of turbines at the dam is the largest of any dam in the world, and the megawatts of electricity generated is the largest as well. And yes, the Three Gorges Dam can be seen from outerspace.

The tour was very comprehensive - it started on one bank of the river, by the locks, and ended on the other side, where we saw a museum and some of the construction equipment used during the project. Looking ahead, the Chinese have to continuously manage the river's ecology and traffic; in addition, because a large reservoir has been created, there is an increased risk of seismic activity in the area. The resettlement wasn't without its difficulties; people's lives were disrupted, and settlements that existed for centuries, in addition to innumerable ancient artifacts, have been lost forever in the flooding. On the other hand, this is the largest "green" project in the world - simply by harnessing the power of one of the world's longest rivers, the Chinese are able to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels to create energy.

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By Red Sox Steve
VagabondGuru.com

Yantze River

I booked my river cruise about a week prior to its departure to ensure I would get my desired accommodation and schedule. We left Chongqing from a port on the Jialing River in Yuzhong, Chongqing’s central business district.

Although the travel agent, the accompanying brochure, and even the Lonely Planet called it a river “cruise”, the accommodations and hospitality were spartan. Even Kathie Lee's old jingle couldn't sell this trip! Nevertheless, I had a nice roommate and settled in comfortably prior to departure. Judging by the other cruise ships at the dock that evening, this excursion was a popular one - through the Three Gorges, and ending at their eponymous dam, with a handful of sightseeing stops in between.

The ship pulled away from the dock after sundown, and we headed east, downriver. I slept soundly until the middle of the night, when a loud boom and accompanying crunching sound woke me up - I thought it was no big deal, but when I woke up in the morning, I got the alarming news: another boat attempted a turn and crashed into us. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. The damage our ship sustained wasn’t enough to sink our boat, but it did force us to remain in port - 12 hours of travel time was instead spent fixing a needless accident. This was no pleasure cruise, for sure.

Eventually, everyone moved onto a new ship and we were on our way. I spent as much time as I could taking in the view from the top deck as we went downriver. For miles we saw various sized riverine settlements, nestled into a rolling, mountainous landscape. Some had just a few small houses and buildings, and others were larger cities with ports, able to handle different volumes of river traffic. From either side of the ship, I could see high hills and small mountains - for millions of years, the Yangtze, the world’s third longest river (the Nile and the Amazon are 1 and 2, respectively) had carved this wending route from the Himalayas out to the Pacific through some of the most remote parts of China.

I was one of the few westerners on the boat. It took getting to know Sam and Ollie, two Brits travelling together, and Virginia, a retired schoolteacher from Brooklyn, to figure out when mealtime was, and what other activities were available to us onboard. I used my best Chinese to get to know about a dozen fellow tourists - off-duty policemen, families on vacation, and even a university professor. Like me, they were here to relax and take in the sites. I spoke to a number of the tour guides onboard - the trip was part of a well-trodden path for them; what I thought would be a discussion about years spent traveling the river (interesting to me, monotony for them) turned into Chinese and English lessons, ensuring mutual amusement.

There were a limited number of things to do onboard - I spent most of my time on the top deck, watching the landscape scroll like a movie reel playing out from side to side. Many of the Chinese played mahjong, a popular gambling game, others smoked (too much, I thought, when I had to breathe it in), while others just sat on the top deck, drinking Tsingtao beer and munching on pumpkin seeds ("gua zi"), carefully breaking the shell away - a tedious undertaking which helped pass the time.

When we passed through the first gorge (Qutang Gorge), before reaching the Daning River (check out this link for an easy-to-read map), it was as if we could reach out and touch this massive rock wall, tens of stories high. As I looked downriver, two mountains seemed to converge with the bending Yangtze disappearing into the distance. The highest peaks extended far into the sky, and were either bare rock faces or green mountain sides. The pristine turquoise river butting up against a muddy brown rock face formed a stark natural color contrast.

We had a few scheduled stops, which, like cruises I've been on back in the US, were geared towards tourism, and set up mostly to separate visitors from their renminbi. Things on the boat weren't so interesting, so disembarking even temporarily was a welcome change. The most notable stop we made was to see the "Mini" Three Gorges, also known as the "Lesser" Three Gorges.

We hopped onto a different boat when we reached the juncture where the Yangtze and Daning met, and took a three hour excursion up a smaller river, passing through gorges known as "Dragon Gate", "Misty", and "Emerald". The Daning was a bit narrower, so at times it seemed that the very tall rock faces blocked out most of the sky. It was amazing to see the work mother nature had put in at the end of the last Ice Age. Nearly flat, perpendicular slabs of rock stood like towering sentries over a pristine yet powerful body of water. And to think, we still had two larger gorges on the Yangtze to pass, the Wu and Xiling, which extended even farther along the riverbanks than Qutang Gorge.

When we passed through the Wu and Xiling Gorges farther down river, the experience was similar - massive mountainsides and cliffs carved out by the river. That we would pass through the gorges was no surprise; seeing their height from close up was unforgettable. Our ship was easily dwarfed by the land masses on either side. Mother Nature had done some of her most outstanding work forcing this river through the terrain, from the highest peaks of the Himalayas thousands of miles east to the Pacific, making its way past what are now some of China's most populated cities.

Up until I boarded the ship back in Chongqing, I had spent my time either in heavily populated urban areas or on crowded high-speed trains. The boat trip, while a little perilous, got me close to some remote parts of inland China. Just days ago, I had only heard about the Yangtze and the Three Gorges. By the time we disembarked in Yichang, I was grateful to have taken in a good portion of China's natural beauty, before heading to one of mankind's most significant construction projects to date: the Three Gorges Dam.

(to be continued...)

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