The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2007

The original track had one tunnel 466 yards in length: a major engi- neering feat for the time. The mon- soon flooding of late spring 2006 created landslides that ripped the old rail from its precarious bed, leav- ing long sections of track hanging in mid-air above the raging waters, as if awaiting a troupe of trapeze artists. The terrain levels off as the can- yon route through high peaks nears its headwaters. There, under drag- on-tooth mountains, nestle scenic brick villages with harvested rice stalks stacked in dried paddies in the shape of a Shriner’s fez. This portion of the journey is quintessential China: rice-farming communities in mist under jagged peaks beside a winding river that flows south. Over the pass in Ping Shi, beside the headwaters of the northward-flowing Xiang River, the stunning scenery is full of karst spires towering above an idyllic moun- tain valley. Darkness typically falls by the time the train goes north of Ping Shi, but under a full moon a number of glistening lakes fill the valleys be- tween high mountain ranges. The Chang Jiang (Yangtze), too, is cross- ed at night, its watercraft flickering like fireflies. Some 200 miles upriver, the Three Gorges Dam is nearing com- pletion. This $25 billion, mile-long behemoth will be the largest hydro- electric dam in the world. The waters of the world’s third-longest river will create a reservoir 300 miles in length. It will also displace some 1.3 million people; indeed, the reser- voir has already submerged hun- dreds of mines, factories and waste dumps, creating environmental chal- lenges on a huge scale. Construc- tion of the dam is already completed and it is slated to begin generating electricity in 2008. Rural and Urban Awakening north of the Yangtze, one is truly in another country: the stereotypical China of vast collective farms. (Fifty percent of the Chinese population is engaged in farming.) This central region of China is very similar to the American heartland: both are covered in corn and wheat. In the height of summer, endless amber waves of grain and corn as high as an elephant’s eye stretch to a western horizon of dry, craggy mountains. Unlike in America, how- ever, the decrepit dirt-path town- ships grow and tend their corn and 64 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 Top of the pass near Lechang.