Three Gorges Dam anxiety

A couple of weeks since my last post and, for those of you keeping score at home, this is now officially my longest blog. As for life beyond the web, you're not missing much. A new camera on the way, all of the accessories waiting anxiously for its arrival. Work is getting to be more work everyday. Yet another reason I'm chomping at the bit to get out of here and into the East. I'm positive that I'm being naive, if not downright ignorant, but the only worry I have is being able to cook decent, inexpensive food. A plethora of problems are waiting for me at the Narita airport, but I'm not even sweating it at the moment. At this point, I'm more worried about getting upriver of the Three Gorges Dam before it floods everything in Central China. Essentially destroying thousands of years of river culture, both in villages lining the river banks and the ancient ruins they're racing to uncover. It's amazing how the displacement of somewhere over 2 million people and the destruction of unexplored historic treasures are being brushed aside in the name of technological advancement. Fair enough, an obscene amount of people will be getting electricity and, therefore, "modernity", but it's difficult to say whether the pros outweigh the cons. I would be happy to say that they do if these archeological digs were being allowed the time to make significant progress on their work; but with the impending flooding, only a fraction of the artifacts are going to be uncovered. The artifacts that are being recovered are pulling their own "dam effect", flooding the local museums to the point where they've had to shut down so as to convert to giant warehouses while bigger museums are built. There are priceless goods literally sitting in the rain outside of these converted museums, waiting for looters to take advantage of their exposure. And then there are the cemetaries. I won't get into that, but let's just say the Chinese people are making huge sacrifices, sacrifices that their government will never be able to pay back. Anyway, for those of you who won't be able to make it there before 2009, when almost all of this will be lost, I'll do my best to take a bunch of pictures while I'm (hopefully) there. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.