Yangtze Reservoir starts to fill

JUNE 2003

With the click of a computer mouse, the flow of the Yangtze River was reduced to a mere trickle Sunday, June 1, allowing the reservoir behind the massive Three Gorges Dam to begin to fill.

Only three of the 22 gates through which the river has been diverted while construction of the dam has taken place were left open to keep the river downstream from running dry.

Engineers used a computer program to close the gates.

The effect was immediate and visible as thousands of people lined the banks and watched their homes and fields gradually disappear under water rising at the rate of seven inches an hour.

By June 15 the river upstream from the dam will be some 200 feet higher than it was at the end of May. It will be kept at that level until 2006 when it will be raised another 60 feet. A further 60 feet will be added by the time of the project's scheduled completion in 2009.

For 67 days, shipping on the river has been brought to a standstill. It is expected to resume on June 16 with the opening of permanent shiplocks at the dam.

During the interim, goods have had to be transferred overland between Maoping, a port upstream from the dam site, and Yichang, the large city 38 km downstream from the dam.

Cruise ships and passenger ships plying between Yichang and Chongqing have also had to put in at Maoping, but will be resuming their normal schedule when the shiplock opens.

It is expected to take ships one and a half hours to pass through the more than four-mile-long shiplock that has been constructed on the north bank of the Yangtze. The difference in water level from top to bottom of the shiplock is 350 fee

Formed on Aug. 7, the 30-member committee is charged with working out the structure of the much larger organizing committee that will take on the massive job of preparing for the Games.

Tu Mingde, Secretary General of the Chinese Olympic Committee, said on Chinese Central Television Aug. 19, that this initial stage should be completed in about five months.

A general framework will be worked out, blueprints for the organizing committee established, and advice from home and abroad gathered, studied, reviewed and evaluated, he said
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The committee's first job will be to develop a city contract with the International Olympic Organization, which owns the Games.

Tu, who has been involved in the Olympic movement for 29 years, said the Beijing Games will have three themes. They will be the Green Olympics, focusing on environmental issues, the People's Olympics, focusing not just on the athletes but the billions of spectators worldwide, and the Hi-Tech Olympics, where the latest in technology will be used.

"When the Olympic Committee awarded the 2008 Games to Beijing, they described it as a unique legacy to China and to sport," said Tu, who is fluent in English and is often referred to as China's "sports diplomat."

"It's a legacy not just for Beijing, but for the whole country," he said. "It will help us widen our contacts, strengthen international friendly relations and accelerate economic development and social progress," he said.

Wan-Da Tour, which specializes in personalized guided tours of China, was born six years ago out of a unique collaboration between a Chinese actress and a Canadian journalist.

Beijing native Naiwei Bai was a child movie star in China and well known to grade-school children throughout the country for her lead portrayal of a newspaper boy in the 1970s film Bao Tong.

Also a singer trained in classical Western opera, she taught at the prestigious Beijing Conservatory of Music and performed in China, Japan, Hong Kong and Canada. She moved to Victoria, in Canada, in the mid-90s.

Naiwei has many other accomplishments. She holds a diploma in Chinese cuisine from one of Beijing's top cooking schools and a certificate in tai chi quan from the Beijing University of Physical Education, China's Number One sport institute.

"Naiwei should be designated a national treasure!" one traveller said after returning from a China tour with her in July.

She leads many of Wan-Da's tours, which stress educational and cultural features as well as such famed attractions as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Warriors and the Three Gorges. The www.wandatours.com site, designed and created by John Harley and Laurel Bernard of Victoria, includes sections showcasing China's history and achievements.

Derek Sidenius, the company's other founder, is also a fascinating personality.

Sidenius spent 9 years in China, teaching and working as a journalist on a number of English publications, including the official news agency, Xinhua, the official English-language newspaper China Daily and the pre-eminent monthly publication China Today. He was living in Beijing during the Tiananmen Crackdown in 1989.

He is a world traveler who started early. In his teens, he trekked across Mexico, Central and South America, worked in the oil fields of Colombia, and searched for adventure in the Amazon and the jungles of the Guianas. Since then, Sidenius has wandered through dozens of countries from the South Pacific to the former Soviet Union and South Africa, where he has paternal family roots.

"Wandering is a natural for us," he says of the company's name.

Despite www.wandatours.com's carp logo, the name has nothing to do with the film A Fish Called Wanda. Wan and Da are two Chinese characters meaning "10,000 years" and "rising ever higher." In combination, they carry auspicious connotations.

The "wan sui" in Chinese is a salutation for long life -- 10,000 years long at least. And, by adding "rising ever higher" to "wan," the company sums up its aims and hopes for the future.

Most of all, Wan-Da wants to show people the China that its founders love -- especially as China gears up to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"China is still the great unknown for many people in the West," Sidenius says. "But this is changing. A lot of the myths about China are fading away and people are beginning to realize a whole new world exists there - and we want to help them discover it."