I am not one to get excited by man made machines, but this dam is magnificent.

Literally going through the ship locks as I type. Gary from England reckons we are moving ten feet per minute. We have three more locks to go. Basically all of the ships enter a waiting bay and the gates are closed. Then an immense amount of water is added and the ship begins to raise kind of like a lift, we then move along, the gates are lowered and we sail through to the other side where the water level is the same. I am sitting in my cabin watching the giant cement wall fall below me. No sign of sky yet.

Prior to coming here I had only heard bad things about the dam and the relocation of Yangtze villages (hopefully will get pictures of these tomorrow as we head past the lesser of the three gorges). Environmental concerns relating to disturbing the natural flow of the river and the extinction of species such as the Chinese river dolphin and restriction of fishing between May and August. But after chatting to the guides and a couple of the locals, I was surprised at just how welcome all this cement is. Here is what my Chinese guide had to say about it:

“There are three reasons why the dam is good. The first one, the main purpose was to help the ships that sail from Chongqing to Yi Chang move faster. The next is to control flooding - the Yangtze flooded several times in the past 100 years which meant lots of people dying and being left without a home, my father's home was flooded two times causing much loss. Then we want to make energy for power. And this creates hydro-power.”

Evidently, it provides the same amount of power as 10 power plants. So as far as energy goes, it's fairly clean I suppose. But it had to get a little dirty to get there in the first place. One of those ethical ends before the means debates? What do you think? Good or bad?