The following blog post features student writing.

Today we went on a small ferry ride around the area of the Three Gorges featuring the mountains that surrounded us on all sides. It was a rainy day, and mist lightly shrouded the tips of the mountains, with rocky cliffs that jutted into the river at irregular angles. The raindrops made little spiraled dimples on the river’s surface. We rolled down the window to look at the sights our guide described. Our guide was a local from a Three Gorges Dam resettlement, and she talked about how her new apartment was better than the old house her family of four used to live in. She was kind enough to give some students in our group interviews concerning communism and gender roles in Chinese education. She also advertised some trip-related merchandise, which made it clear that the ferry was for tourism and not necessarily cultural education. I still can’t get over how green the Chinese mountainsides are compared to the brown California mountains I’ve seen all my life. It’s interesting that there are markings along the sides of the mountains indicating how deep the water would be if it reached the markings. You can see an almost perfectly horizontal waterline separating the trees and plant life from the bare rock of the cliff. The bare rock walls form a band around these mountains, hinting at the flooding they must have endured to create the landscape we see today. Although much of our readings on the Yangtze River have dealt with flooding, it’s hard to imagine flooding of such catastrophic proportions when our cruise ship rides the waters so smoothly.

After the memorable excursion, we came back to the cruise and had dinner, which then was followed by a crew cabaret. The show started with traditional dancing, but then a small girl took away the show by dancing to Shakira’s “Waka Waka.” We performed M.A.M. Slam’s routine wearing our Lenses on China shirts—we started on stage in a circle, where we then counted down from ten in Chinese. The audience definitely found it humorous, but it sounded really cool. Our performance was followed by a series of traditional and modern dances by the crew; however, they took a slight turn and started to invite guests on stage, and started the Hugging Game, which was similar to musical chairs, but we had to huddle in a specific number of people in each group. The most memorable part was when Jelani went up to a group of four five-year-olds and embraced the kids in order to make a group of five. After this hilarious game, the crew invited us once again to dance “YMCA” and “Cha Cha Slide” on stage, which was really fun. The night ended with a lot of fun and laughter, and it was truly one of the most memorable days of the trip so far.