The other weekend, I was reading the travel section of The New York Times and came across a great article about Chongqing, a city of 32 million residents in inland China. It reminded me of my visit to Chongqing in 2007. We boarded a ship in Chongqing to take us down the Yangtze River for three days. The change underway everywhere was amazing. Even though the reservoir just reached full capacity in October of this year, water levels had already risen significantly. All along the river bank were markers of where the final water level would be. Below them were farms, houses, and people going about their lives. Our boat docked in a town (I can’t remember the name) for a day and we were informed that our boat was docked over what was once a city of 50,000 people. When we left the city, we sailed through a bridge that was well over half submerged. It must have been slated for demolition at some point.

I’ve visited China twice and the pace of change left me awestruck both times. On his site, Paul Kedrosky shows the incredible increase in China’s demand for cars. In eighteen months, China’s demand for cars has doubled and per capita car ownership is still just 1/40^th of the United States. The growth of China’s highway system was very apparent on the ground. Every few hours on our trip, a massive suspension bridge, partially finished, would emerge from the mist. Even far inland, superhighways were being built across huge stretches of farmland. Three days after it started, our trip down the Yangtze ended at the Three Gorges Dam. I have to say that compared to the Hoover Dam, it was a little different than one might expect. It’s extremely wide but not nearly as high as the Hoover Dam, and it was built without the arc of many United States dams.  Nonetheless it was a pretty awesome sight. – Keyen Farrell