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China's Three Gorges Dam ... biggest building job since the Great Wall.

Locks raise and lower freighters and cruise ships over 100m between the Lower Yangtze and the Upper Yangtze behind the dam.

Viking River Cruises’ Royal Viking Sun amid China’s spectacular Three Gorges.

POSTED: 06 MAY 09

Rollin' down the Yangtze ... how gorges

MOST hail it China’s greatest building job since the Great Wall was started in the 7th century BC and took 2000 years to finish.

But while the Three Gorges Dam has so far taken just 15 years of hard yakka and has another two to go, it’s also attracted its fair share of doomsayers, self-anointed structural genii and general ratbags.

A massive two-kilometre-wide barrier of steel and concrete across the great Yangtze River in China’s south-east, the dam has already cost more than $A50 billion and will soak up another $10 billion before doing everything it’s being built to do: generate a whopping 22,500MW of electricity, control flooding in the lower Yangtze in wetter months, and release water to these areas in drier times.

In the process of building this gargantuan wall that’s 101 metres high, 115 metres through at its base, and twice as wide as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and its approaches are long, more than 1.24 million people had to be relocated to newly created towns and cities as their original communities slowly drowned under a spreading 23 trillion litres of water.

And thousands of cultural and historical relics were also moved to the safety of higher ground, while one 200-year-old temple and a rare, attached nine-storey wooden pavilion had another dam built around them, leaving them sitting on what’s now an island within the growing 1000-square-kilometre reservoir.

And interestingly, the dam has created a whole new industry: river-cruising, with about a dozen tourist ships now operating on the Yangtze. One international company, Viking River Cruises sails 12-to-17-night luxury cruises between Shanghai and Beijing, including, with some voyages, side flights to see the Great Wall and Terracotta Warriors.

These cruises offer a chance to see vast areas of China up close and personal, with daily shore excursions to cultural, historic and religious sites, a local zoo to see the pandas, modern shopping centres contrasting with village markets, and a school sponsored by Viking Cruise Lines at which the kids sing Chinese songs and encourage visitors to put on their own impromptu singalong of national anthems or folk-songs.

Our Jolly Swagman usually gets a good work-out.

There’s also an inspection of the dam and the locks that move vessels 100-metres between the lower Yangtze and its upper reaches behind the dam.

Viking’s guest suites have balconies, dining is exceptional with a mix of Western and Chinese cuisines, there’s an Observation Lounge and Bar, Sundeck and Bar, gym and onboard entertainment.

For fly/cruise details on Viking Century Sun’s cruises on the Yangtze being sold exclusively to Australian guests, phone Cruiseco on 1800 225 656 or visit www.cruising.com.au