Going Against the Flow (2 of 4)

In comparison, Third Class was a series of dorm-like cabins that accommodated up to twelve passengers, while Fourth Class was similar but in dorms that held up to twenty people. Lastly there was Fifth Class – deck space only.

Walking through the main foyer area of the ferry, scenes at times resembled ones of a carnival. Fifth Class passengers noisily played Mahjong or various gambling-associated card games on the floor while others chatted amongst themselves or slept, huddled in blankets on the bare deck. A couple of resourceful passengers had gone so far as to bring a double bed with them to ease the discomfort of Fifth Class for their journey’s duration…you see all nature of unusual sights traveling in China.

With faster modes of transport such as trains and aircraft available to our destination, comparably few Westerners take the time to journey by river. Therefore as the only foreigner onboard the boat, my presence often saw the turning of heads whenever I walked past. Their thoughts were almost audible: What is a foreigner doing aboard a Yangzi ferry?

Sailing out of Shanghai, the boat followed first the busy and dirty Huangpu River to its junction with the Yangzi. Steering hard to port – we began the steady crawl upstream, against the murky-brown flow of the river into central China.

Like any river of comparable size, the mouth of the Yangzi is like a great alluvial fan and it was not possible to see from one low-lying bank to the other, especially through the misty smog that hovered irritatingly – often creating unnaturally-near horizons. Watching the river’s current, one could quickly pick its might. To think that the immense volumes of silt it carried within had come from thousands of miles inland was quite remarkable. It was the reason why the Chinese coast in this area was advancing outwards into the ocean by 25 metres each year!

The human importance of the river could not be better underlined than by the vast number of vessels of every size and description that plied its waters. From tiny fishing sampans to barges and river freighters right up to ocean-going tankers and container vessels, the Yangzi’s deep waters made it a busy inland channel of commerce. At any time there was rarely less than five or six boats in sight in any direction.

Our first port of call was Nantong, a bustling little port on the north bank of the Yangzi in Jiangsu province. We stopped long enough to off-load and on-load passengers and freight. A female voice repeatedly reminded passengers in Mandarin over the ship’s public address system not to get off the boat if they were traveling further upstream lest they be left behind. Indeed, the reasons for this were obvious as we were under way again within ten minutes of stopping.

For dinner we each consumed a local delicacy called a zhongzi – meat and egg, inside a palm-sized ball of sticky rice and wrapped within a flax leaf for freshness. While it might have tasted better hot, it was fine cold and most certainly more appetizing than the food menu onboard the boat. We had brought with us sufficient stocks of food, water and soft drinks to keep us independent of those aboard the ferry for the entire journey. In fact our sole purchase onboard was a cake of soap, an essential item on a journey such as this.

As the Jiang Yu #7 traveled onwards through the night, I went out onto the deck and looked upwards. Now away from the bright city lights and excesses of urban smog, I could see the stars in the sky for the first time since arriving in China a month earlier. At that moment, with only the soft drum-like beat of the ferry’s engines and the lap of her bow wake against the hull for company, it was an amazing feeling. Through the darkness, one could vaguely make out the outline of the shore and, with the cool breeze in my face, at that moment it was hard to believe that I was traveling up one of the world’s great rivers in the middle of China.