Lost in China

That's where the water level is supposed to end up by the time they're finished with the project.

Wooh!

Can you imagine just losing your house as the waters rise?

All of this is going to be totally buried.

They didn't just build the dam big, they built this whole place big.

Whoa!

That's amazing!

l'm Jeff Hutchens and l'm a photographer.

l'm Peter Hutchens and l'm a film-maker.

We grew up in China and now we're going back.

To capture China in its moment of change.

And there's only one way to do that...

..to get lost.

That's the Yangtze River down there.

And we're playing a little Eight Ball in one of the coolest locations

we've ever shot pool in our lives.

Are we going to get taken to the cleaners?

l think so. These guys look like pros.

- Oh, there you go. - We're solids.

lt's a matter of national pride, Pete, come on.

Pete and l haven't come all this way just to play pool.

Next time.

lf you want to see the epicentre of change in China,

the Yangtze River is where the most drastic developments are happening.

For thousands of years, the Yangtze River has been China's major artery for travel and trade.

But now it's a whole new game.

Go, Jeff, go.

This has got to be the coolest place l've ever played.

We start out in Wushan in central China,

home to a stretch of natural beauty unlike any other in the world -

the famous Three Gorges.

This picturesque part of China

has been the muse of China's poets and painters for centuries.

The Three Gorges is where the Chinese have undertaken

one of the most ambitious construction projects ever attempted.

The Three Gorges Dam.

The dam is located 1 20 kilometres downriver from Wushan.

When completed, the Dam will be the world's biggest producer of hydroelectric power.

lt will turn a significant portion of the Yangtze River into a giant reservoir,

flooding 632 square kilometres

affecting well over a thousand towns and villages.

So this might be the last time for anyone to see some of the places we're going to visit.

So he doesn't like the old city and you like the new city. OK.

lt's time for us to see for ourselves what's going on in the Three Gorges region.

And to do that, we'll need a boat.

All right, first things first. We've got to find our boat.

Oh, check it out. They rolled out the red carpet for us.

Where's the boat?

Yikes. Er...

- Well... - Oh, check it out.

- Are you kidding me? - The Huctins.

- Close enough. - We're on this mammoth?

l'm not quite sure what l was expecting.

But this seems a bit excessive.

- Morning. - Good morning.

So this is a boat for us and 200 of our closest friends?

Look at the size of this.

We wanted a boat for just two of us. This is huge.

When the boat finally moves away from the dock,

we start heading upstream, toward the Three Lesser Gorges,

under a dense, low sky, threatening rain.

This is the sort of iconic China look to me, you know,

where it really is that layer after layer of smog and cloud.

lt's a little dreamlike. Like it just fades away into a mist.

- Yeah, it does. - This is going to be exciting.

Yeah.

You think they have a karaoke system on board?

As we pull away from town, the river begins to take on the look and feel of a much older China,

except for the huge bridge coming up.

We're about to enter the first of the Lesser Gorges - Dragon Gate Gorge.

The water is supposed to come high enough on this bridge that it's lapping right at the edge.

l saw the 1 75 metre signs around.

That's where the water level is supposed to end up by the time they're finished.

Which is amazing to think that all of this is going to be totally buried.

The river has already risen about 1 30 metres since the dam was started in 1 993,

but when it's finished, the river behind the dam will have risen another 20 metres,

creating a massive reservoir with the water level as high as a 50-storey building.

And drowning 4,000 years of Chinese history in the process.

The water's a little too green.

lt's like the janitorial staff just came through

and dropped in some green dye this morning, isn't it?

The jade colour comes from industrial pollution

and the foliage that is now underwater.

The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world, behind the Nile and the Amazon.

But unlike those two rivers, the Yangtze used to be very unpredictable and dangerous.

Every decade or so, the Yangtze has had major floods, killing thousands of people.

Just in the last 1 00 years, floods have killed an estimated 300,000 people

trapped in the Yangtze river basin.

The Three Gorges Dam is supposed to change all that,

plus provide China enough hydroelectric power as 1 8 carbon-spewing coal-powered plants.

lt's been a dream of Chinese leaders for almost a century,

and now it's finally happening.

The dam is being touted by the Chinese government as incredible progress,

but others aren't so sure.

So we want to find out for ourselves from the people who are directly affected.

This is the biggest relocation project that's ever been done.

lt's over a million people that are being taken from their homes here

and saddled up with some new place.

l think they have a couple of options.

They can either move to a village that's built a little higher up than their previous one

or they can move somewhere different.

A lot of people are going out to some of the big cities, Chongqing,

and, l mean, totally shifting their lifestyle.

That's got to be such a weird thing to see your home and your land and everything

just gradually fade away as the water comes up.

ln a few years, there's not going to be land to farm any more.

lt's all going to be buried under water.

There are a few places you can pull something like that off,

and China is definitely one of them.

You think that one's going to be under water, that island there?

Yeah, could be.

Look at that one. lt's right on the water.

Some of the negative effects are just beginning to surface,

like landslides,

water pollution and damage to wildlife along the river.

For some, this is considered the price for progress.

Others are quietly concerned about the consequences.

But in China, it's difficult for those voices to be heard.

The government would rather point to the economic advantages and flood control

the dam has brought to the Yangtze.

Everywhere we look, we see construction under way,

like the towering bridge we're about to pass under.

Wow. So this highway is supposed to connect Lanzhou to the Hangzhou.

lt's over a thousand miles.

There really are cranes everywhere, aren't there?

This is such a feat to cross the river here.

You can barely make out the people up there. lt's huge.

But construction isn't the only thing adding to the new look of the Yangtze River,

as we're about to see.

Good morning, Wushan.

This is WYNG TZE bringing you the best of the Yangtze River.

We got a front moving in from the south by way of Chongqing.

lt's heavy industrial pollution

so don't forget to set your flood clocks forward.

We don't want to have to wake the scuba team.

Take in the scenery, y'all, cos it's not going to be around much longer.

There is some man-made flooding to the southeast of the city.

Seems like it's been around for quite a long time.

So get your old cities together, move 'em up to higher ground, y'all.

And please, for the safety of all aboard,

don't forget to keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Mr Jong is part of the boat crew.

Where did you grow up?

You grew up in the city of Dachang.

So l've heard there's a new city and there's an old city there. (Translates)

So it's cleaner in the new city.

lt's more comfortable. The environment is better. OK.

Are there things you miss about the old city?

l think it's natural to love the place that you grow up in.

We're going today, actually, to Dachang.

Welcome. OK, great.

Just around the corner, we're about to see one of the newly rebuilt cities,

while the old city lies deep beneath the river nearby.

We wonder what the new city feels like and what was really swallowed up by the river.

Our boat pulls into Dachang, a city that's only just a few years old.

The 1, 700-year-old city of the same name is one of the casualties of the rising waters.

So apparently the old town of Dachang is buried somewhere underneath this water.

But what they did before they flooded it was they took it and numbered every single brick

and every piece of timber then put it back together brick by brick,

piece of timber by piece of timber

and it's somewhere inside these condos.

We have a couple of hours layover in Dachang,

so we decide to see how they've reassembled the ancient city.

l'm really curious to see what it looks like, if it looks like a real old town.

Well, this is obviously the new town.

The old city isjust a few steps away.

But we soon realise that the ''old city'' doesn't seem all that old.

So this is supposed to be the old city.

This is not looking promising.

These stones don't look very old.

lt costs a lot of money and labour to bring up a whole city stone by stone.

So they probably just decided to recreate an old city, and hoped nobody would notice.

l mean, it looks more like a Hollywood set or something.

l was really expecting an old city.

They tried but no dice.

So l guess the real Dachang is still flooded, buried under the water.

The funny thing is, as we've been walking around and talking to people,

people have seemed...

How old do you think he is?

90 years old.

So he's seen the old city and the new city, for sure.

Ah, he likes the new city better than the old one.

He likes this place.

Everybody actually seems to be pretty happy with this.

Walking through a back street, we come to a small fenced-off area

and a possible clue as to what happened to the remains of the real old city.

There are those numbered logs you were talking about.

So this is where the logs and bricks really ended up - in a junk pile.

So much for rebuilding the old city piece by piece.

Just a few blocks away, we get a glimpse of the possible future of Dachang.

Tourism, complete with guides and souvenir stands.

Back on the boat, we travel through the next of the Three Lesser Gorges,

called Misty Gorge.

The narrow waterways of the Lesser Gorges

allow us to get a feel for what it was like to travel along the river centuries ago.

Back in the old days, enterprising Chinese warlords would put iron chains across the water

to stop boats and collect a river tax.

The incredible scenery that we're seeing today

is probably pretty similar to what ancient travellers would have seen.

More likely than not, the same simian welcoming committee