Day 17 san xia cruise
Waking up by 6 for breakfast was a TORTURE! Not only was the food terrible, we were so tired too
Everything tasted bland and oily :/ we can’t expect anything from a 2 star cruise, yucky food is better than no food. Many people all over the world are dying of hunger and here we are throwing food away like nobody’s business!
We docked after breakfast and climbed up to BAI DI CHANG to visit this temple. At the bottom of the hill there was this carriage service, where we could pay an amount and allow the carriers to carry us up! It might seem tempting and all, but thinking of it, we came all the way here, and we should challenge ourselves!
The tour guide told us a story, the story that left a great impression on me was the story on how they got the coffins up to the top of the mountains, they have different analogies of how they got them up, it was either carrying them up by hand or building some stairs structure and walking all the way up. The purpose of doing this is to show how filial they are to their elders, the higher up on the mountain they are the more filial they are. Till now they do not know how they got the coffins up so high.
Reflection:
Being influence by the western culture, we aren’t so superstitious all that we’ll do is to give them a proper burial, we’ll not go through the extend of carrying their coffins to the top of the mountain to show how filial we are, as long as you know you have done your best, your elders will know it and you do not have to put on a show to show to the world how “great” you are.
Back to the boat we go,
Lunch and followed by some sightseeing of the 3 gorges, it wasn’t as magnificent as what Mr Lim claims, maybe I’m do not appreciate such sights as much as he does? Cause as we cruise along the Yangtze River, the sight is exactly the same from the start to end.
Stopped over to take this little boat to cruise along the river, the most unforgettable event was the boat was manually rowed two of them in front and two at the back,( all of them were >50 years old) there isn’t a need for them to row us but however it’s their way of living and they have been doing it all their lives. At one point the river got really narrow and that made rowing impossible so they had to pull us along the river. Even thought it was just a short distance, I could feel their effort and the amount strength they had to put in to pull us along.
I’ll never let my parents do such a thing; they shouldn’t be doing such strenuous stuff in their old age, they should be enjoying live, and not working their ass off.
At night, we were all geared up to enter the dam! It took forever to enter and it took forever to get out of just one gantry! However the experience was rather cool, I’ve learnt it back in school but to experience it was even better! First they release the water so that the water level will be the same as the next gantry and continuing for the next 5 gantries. We could actually see the difference, one minute we can see the sky the next we’re facing the walls of the dams!
