So two Jews get on a boat in Chong Qing...

I'd have to say that I don't think I've ever felt more foreign than I do here, and I'm saying this as someone who has moments pretty much every day when I stop to check on who I am and what I'm doing here, even in the most familiar of surroundings. I've been in plenty of places where I'm not a local, but this is beyond anything. Before we got on the boat we hadn't seen anyone European-looking for several days, though I guess there was a German family at the hotel in Kunming. The flight, forget about the flight, then entire airport in Kunming was populated by Asians. In any event, the boat had a mix of nationalities, and very few Chinese as passengers. We met Thais, South Africans, Aussies and a few Americans (well, Texans anyway). In Tibet we'd hung out with Americans as much as possible, joining another family for dinner one night and inviting a woman traveling alone to join us another night (wife of Chairman of the board of Brandeis U, as it turned out). Here we had an assigned table, and our company was an Australian couple and an American man and his 10 year-old daughter. Could be much worse.

Let me tell you about what I saw on the Yangtze. First of all, these people will farm ANYWHERE. Almost every steep hillside is terraced with small patches of crops, usually corn. "Look, corn!" has become a running joke, because it seems to get squeezed into every piece of unoccupied land larger than a couple of square meters. Second, most of the upstream damage has already been done. A million people have been relocated to varying size cities featuring the classic apartment building the design that makes every Chinese city at best boring and worst an eyesore. They will go so far as to admit that the older people are not happy about this, about 10% of the relocated people are unhappy, mostly because they have been given insufficient compensation by the government. Finally, the old Yangtze is gone. The water level has already been raised 140 meters, with another 35 to go. Most of what existed by the river is now under water, the river is wide and deep with no rapids.

I'd read about some of the river towns before we came, but none of them exist in their original form. We stopped at on called Fengdu, which was pretty big (half million people), though not at the town itself. We were given a choice of visiting a relocated family or going to something called The Ghost Temple. Although we're about templed out, we went for the ghosts. The ship docked at the site of the old town, which is new just a few foundations left for ships to dock. Everyone's been moved across the river., but the temple is still in place, being on top of the hill. As temples go, this one was pretty cool, though most of it was reconstructed after the Red Guard smashed everything, except for a couple of statues that they were apparently afraid of. There are some scary-looking ghost types, and some impressive looking folks who will make the heaven/hell call for each of us. The guide made a joke of everything, and kept giving us little things we had to do to keep our soul safe, like cross a bridge in an odd number of steps, run up these stairs without breathing, balance on this rock on one foot for 3 seconds, pull a rabbit out of a hat. Well, maybe not the last one.

We left Fengdu and kept moving down the river. One of the problems I have with this kind of activity is that everything revolves around meal times, and even if you don't actually get fat, you feel fat. I'd lost about 5 pounds in Tibet, so I didn't really care, but I get tired of feeling stuffed all the time. Apparently, the food was very restrained as cruises go.

I'll continue with the journey later, but first a diversion to:

Chinese Rules of the Road

1. Any vehicle can and should be passed at any time and on either side, regardless of potential impediments.

2. Honk your horn if you see anything moving or that has the potential to move in front of you.

3. If someone honks at you, ignore it. If you are a pedestrian, do not look up.

4. Turn first, look second, or not at all if someone honks. This applies to left, right and u-turns.

5. Traffic markers, lights, signs and rules are, as they say in Pirates of the Caribbean, not so much a code as guidelines.

6. Anything with wheels may be driven or ridden on any road, but only 2 or 3-wheeled vehicles may be driven on the sidewalk.

Still more to come, I've heard the traffic in Shanghai can be exciting.