On the Yangtze River

I remember reading about the Yangtze River when I was six years old and read this book.

Fifty six years later I boarded this cruise ship and took off for 3 days to see it for myself with my fellow BYU China Teachers!

Along the way we docked and strolled the villages which were lucky enough to survive the flooding of the river when the Three Gorges Dam was constructed.

This village had all manner of lore about evil spirits.  Note the Monkey King masks on the right.  He is prominent in Chinese folklore and just downright creepy to me.



I bought this little dress at one of the villages, modeled here by my granddaughter, Rosie.  One of the benefits of retro blogging...

Diane, Anne, and Clyde pose happily.  Diane has achieved BYU China Teachers infamy by buying a sewing machine and sewing Halloween costumes for ALL of her students!!!!!  I know!!!!!!!  She's a heck of a lot of fun.  I don't think Anne and Clyde had any inclination to sew, but Anne DID bake chocolate chip cookies for all of her students.  I mostly just yelled at mine.  Not really.

Happy, festive, cheery, colorful, whimsical architecture.  I wonder if Paco could put something like this up in our backyard...

These little boys were basically unsupervised.  They didn't seem any worse for the wear at all...

I just can't resist.

Paco all touristman-y alongside Kayleen (she's a former BYU roommate of mine from 1976 who has randomly shown up in my life on other occasions--last area conference ever ever held in Ann Arbor--we just met in a corridor there!!!--then she showed up randomly in my gospel doctrine class in Princeton, NJ about 14 years ago!!!--She and her kiddoes were vacationing, so we kidnapped them, checked them out of their hotel and into our bedrooms, and spent a cool cool week traipsing into New York AND even saw Oklahoma on Broadway on New Year's Eve!  THEN we meet again in China...  What do you make of it??)  She's going to run a Great Wall Marathon in a few weeks.  Burnetts strolling along with us as well.

Now THESE stout souls!!!!  They are touring the WORLD for a year!!  Sam, Tim, Katia, and Ash.  I think Tim was an afterthought they picked up along the way, but he seems to fit in.  You can follow them on www.thetruthfultravellers.com!

Happy happies again.  We took a side boattrip down a narrow tributary of the Yangtze--about 6 or 8 to a boat with our own private oarsmen.

And then we arrived at the world's largest DAM!!

Thank you Google Images.  It was rainy and wet, and I can never afford the helicopter rides necessary to get these pictures!

It was a novel unique Easter Weekend.  I looked for Ping.