Yangzi river cruise (upstream)
From Yichang to Chongquin (5days/4nights)

We booked our cruise in Beijing at the main CITS office. It took more than 3 hours, although after 30 minutes we had decided what we wanted. There was no official looking brochure, just a few blurry pics in the internet. Nor did we get an official looking confirmation paper, just plain white paper, our itinerary typed in English with an unreadable stamp. As we asked to have at least something with our names on it, the lady from CITS told us that there was no need for something like this: “Just show up and say your name at the harbor.”
With a slightly odd feeling we payed. We convinced ourselves that we went to the official Chinese travel agency, so it had to be correct.

Beijing Western Train Station to Yichang
Train T-49
3rd class, hard sleeper, 18 hours

Unfortunately our beds were near the toilets and sinks where the people from both coaches had to go to. A lot of spitting, with the obligatory sounds, was going on. Always next to our beds… Finally around 22:30 the light in the coach went out and everybody went to sleep. Quiet! But at 4:30 am the first had to stand up again. We arrived around 11 am at Yichang East Train Station.

Because of the bad weather we decided to wait at the station, before going to the cruise terminal. Our guidebooks didn’t say anything about Yichang and we also didn’t have any internet connection (At the Internet Café at the train station I, Claudia, was rejected. I guess because I’m a foreigner.). After we had a not so good meal at a quick lunch joint at the station, we took a taxi to the pier were our ship should be. 100 RMB well spent for a very long ride. The taxi driver was a good example that Chinese don’t follow every rule. He bend the rules for driving a lot – not without blowing the horn. As we arrived at the pier about 4 ships lay there. We asked and ours was in the second row. Lucky we, we could board immediately. (Otherwise the afternoon would have been very wet and boring as there is nothing at the pier than the ships, no shop, no restaurant, no bench, nothing. And it’s far out of the town.) The receptionist – a young girl surrounded by some Chinese checking in – was at first confused and wanted to sent us back. Westerners? They had to be wrong here! But no, they really booked this ship?!

Cruise ship:
The Goddess No. 1 or Hua Xia Goddess

We had booked a standard cabin (no. 2005) on the 2nd deck, which was quiet nice. It even had a small balcony, wide enough for two chairs. In total the ship had 5 decks plus sun deck. We were the only foreigners on this cruise among approx. 300 Chinese.

Day 1
As we woke up – quiet early at 6 am – the ship was already on its way from Yichang to Chongqing. We were surprised how quiet and gentle it moved. We went to the sun deck for an early coffee. Although it slightly rained it was a beautiful view: impressive green hills left and right to the huge Yangtze River narrowing it into the first of the famous Three Gorges – the Xi Ling Gorge – and covered with low hanging clouds… almost a mystical appearance. Breakfast was buffet style, with rice porridge, fried noodles, baozi, scrambled eggs, sausages. Most of the Chinese guest didn’t seem to be familiar with the buffet concept or just simply ignored standing in line. So a funny whooling of people was the result.

Tip
Socialized in the west these manners and Chinese table manners in general put your serenity to a test. The best way to deal with it, is with a smile – although sometimes hard to accomplish. We always tried to remind ourselves that the same people smiled and waved at us at every other encounter.

Shortly after breakfast the boat stopped for the first optional tour to the Three Gorges Tribe. We skipped that and rather sat on the sun deck and read.

Lunch was another level of in-fighting with our fellow Chinese package tourists 😉 We managed to get our share without being impolite or rude – at least we hope that we did.

The Three Gorges Dam was next. Hadn’t we said that we wanted never to run after a tour guide with a flag? Ha, ha, well done! Now we not only ran after a girl with a flag, but were in the middle of about 4 cruise ship loads of Chinese tourists. All being “yelled” at by their guides using these loudspeakers that only produce distorted sounds. It was absolutely hilarious. The best part of it was inside a hall with a model of the area. It was so loud, so crowded, you could not even hear yourself talking. Hundreds of Chinese people babbling, the explanations of the tour guides with their mini loud speakers plus a bunch of souvenir sellers shouting – absolutely crazy!!

Tip
Chinese seem to be interested in quantitative information – or they think we are. At least that is was you get. Xxx meters high, xxx tons heavy, build xxxx years ago, etc. If you want to know the why, or a story behind the numbers, better buy a western book.

Shortly before dinner the ship set course for the 2-way-5-step-ship-lock. It was really impressive how high this building is and how fast the ship was raised through 5 ship locks. We drank a beer watching this from the sun deck. This time joined by our fellow travelers as well, listening to explanations about the lock from our river guide Echo.

For dinner the same procedure as for lunch. We are talking here about, not queuing up, shoving, putting as much on your on plate as possible, burping, spitting little bones on the table. All of this in about 30 minutes, than the buffet was nearly empty and most of the people left the room.

Shortly after dinner was the Captains Welcome Reception accompanied by his crew. The explanation were given in Chinese and Mrs. Claudia and Mr. Tom – as only foreigners on the cruise – were personally mentioned and got their explanation in English
The entertainment part was Karaoke. We haven’t heard so many wrong notes in a long time! The Chinese didn’t seem to mind and sang full-throated.

For a while we sat in the dark on the sun deck and watched the Goddess float through the night on the pitch black Yangtze before we called it a night.

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Day 2
Called by music and the good morning call from our river guide, we woke up to a sunny day. Before breakfast we already entered the second gorge, the Wu Gorge. Again with detailed explanations from Echo.

After breakfast a smaller boat got us through the Three Lesser Gorges. They are really beautiful. What is a bit sad though is the fact, that the water is full of plastic and other trash.
Interesting was to see a cave high above the water in one of the gorges walls with a very old coffin in it. Ancient tribes put them there – the higher the coffin, the better for the dead. You can see the coffin from the boat. Can’t imagine how they got it there in ancient times…
We skipped the optional tour of the three mini gorges at the end of the three lesser gorges and stayed instead on the boat.

Shortly after the Hua Xia Goddess sailed on we passed the last big gorge of our journey, the Qu Tang Gorge. Coming out of that gorge looking back we saw the landscape that today is on the backside of the 10 RMB note.

For lunch we changed our tactics. We waited for 15 minutes for the first run to be over and collected our food there after. That worked a little better.

In the afternoon – while a lot of the Chinese passengers went onto the optional tour to Fengjie, the Whit a Emperor City – we had an appointment with Echo our river guide. She showed us how to play MahJong. She was patient with us as we needed a little more time to read the Chinese numbers on the tiles. It was fun and we will definitely play it again.

For dinner we waited even a little longer than for lunch. About 30 minutes. As we sat on the table about 70% of the Chinese had already finished their meal and were gone. So it was quiet relaxed.

In the evening there was a nice little Cabaret Show of the crew with dance, music and pantomime. It was very nice to see the young ladies of the service team together with the female boss of hotel management perform together.

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Day 3
Early in the morning we started for our excursion to the Shibaozhai Pagoda. To our surprise we had a guide on our own, so we could leave right away… And before all the other passengers Our guide explained to us, that the old city near the pagoda was gone due to the rise of the water level because of the dam. The government was so generous to provide the local people with new houses. As every time no word about any problems what so ever. Because we were ahead of our fellow cruisers we walked to the pagoda only hearing the birds. We climbed the old wooden pagoda with its beautiful round windows, visited the temple on the top of the rock and walked back. On the backside of the main street the new houses were all empty – whatever this is a sign for …

Back on the ship Echo our river guide had prepared a lesson in basic Chinese for us. Very nice and very useful.

During the afternoon I, Tom, finally cut my beard. It had grown now since Xmas 2014 and I liked it, but, to be honest, it was – especially during meals – a bit unpractical.

For the Captains Farewell Dinner we dressed nicely and were surprised that we could not dine with our fellow cruisers, but were placed on deck 5 with the upgraders in the “Western Restaurant”. Not what we expected… Unfortunately that meant no window table and the behavior of our fellow guests was as Chinese (burping and spitting) as on deck 2 – so no advancement for us, but for sure well meant. We ate, touched glasses with the captain to the nice cruise and went to the sun deck to enjoy the rest of our evening.

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Day 4
The ship arrived in Chongqing in the morning. We had breakfast on the cruise, checked out, said good bye and were on our way to look for the subway station. On the pier we heard Echo say “zài jiàn” – we returned “zài jiàn” and waved goodbye.

It was hot and humid this morning. At the ferry terminal all the cruise ships moor, so their was a lot going on in the streets. Tourists, busses, all sorts of supplies delivered, taxis, souvenir vendors, porters, etc. Because of construction work in the area we somehow rounded the horn of the island and than had to climb many, many steps to get to the subway station – more or less guessing the way. We had nothing dry on our body when we got there. The subway of Chongqing is as modern as it can be and everything is translated in English. From there we got easily to the North Train Station for 8 RMB.
At the train station we bought our ticket for an express train to Chengdu. The cashier had a few problems to decode the number on our passports and people in the queue got nervous and tried to pass me left and right, but finally we got the tickets. As we wanted to enter the station, the nice lady tried to explain us something. We finally got it. We were at the wrong side of the station – the North entrance (north square). We had to take a bus that brought us to the South entrance (south square). We got enough time, so that wasn’t a problem. The bus leaves directly in front of the north entrance, no. 663. It’s cheap!

Remarks
The ship was a Chinese five star cruise ship. That does not mean that it is comparable with a western five star hotel, but a good middle class hotel. The rooms were nice and spacious enough. The beds a bit hard, as Chinese like to sleep a bit harder than we westerners. The shower had always hot water – not like some feedback that we read in the internet. Everything was clean! The housekeeping service came twice a day, everyday fresh spotless new towels. All day you see someone clean the stairways, etc.
The food was Chinese, basic and ok. We have to say that we ate tastier food in very cheap restaurants. The table manners of the Chinese differ a lot from ours. Why the food was served in a buffet style – as one knows that Chinese don’t queue very disciplined and that there normal way is to take food for everyone at the table and this way the buffet is emptied in minutes – is a secret that only the management knows. Still, we liked to dine with our fellow Chinese cruisers, although we sometimes had to accept some strange manners, which was not easy every day.

Bottom line: We recommend doing a cruise on the Hua Xia Goddess. Not only because the price is better, but for the nice contact that we had with many Chinese on board, although we could not talk to each other. When we left the boat and some minutes later met a group of our “old fellow passengers” in the city of Chongqing they recognized us, everybody was laughing, making photos of us and waving goodbye. So sweet

Thank you for reading this far!

You like to know how we traveled on to Chengdu, Shizuan province? What the pandas are like? Find it here.

Find tips and general remarks to China 2015 and the links to the previous provinces – from our start in Beijing in June, down to the south west, until our last stay Hong Kong in July here.

Safe travels
Zài jiàn!
Claudia & Tom