Kayaking the Yangtze River

Each night we camped on spectacular sandy beaches. Caves and strange rock formations made it seem at times as if we were on another planet. The Yangtze was most beautiful at night. Sepia-toned silhouettes of ragged ridges hemmed the horizon beneath a dizzying display of stars.

We saw few people during our nine-day journey and had little contact with the outside world. Then, near the halfway point, we spotted the village of Baoshan, perched on the edge of a cliff 2,000 feet above the river. The humble stone homes were so appealing that we made the long climb to get a closer look. The hike alone, past waterfalls and terraced rice paddies, was magnificent. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, we passed through the town's ancient walled entrance and I realized that we had found "The Place."

The Place is what every traveler dreams of discovering: an unknown village that seems to be frozen in time. Baoshan was, by far, the most fantastic place I had ever seen. Like other canyon towns along the Yangtze, it was largely unscathed by the numerous Han dynasty upheavals that occurred in distant eastern cities. Even under the Mao regime, which stripped away a lot of Chinese heritage elsewhere, the ethnic minorities of Yunnan Province were left undisturbed, allowing them to maintain their ancient customs. Tyranny has largely been an agent for preservation in the region. Western-style capitalism, on the other hand, has brought unprecedented change. There is now greater wealth and a better standard of living, but it remains to be seen whether the old and new will continue to coexist.

On the last day of our trip, wave train after wave train propelled us forward, every stroke bringing us one step closer to our take-out.

Our journey was soon over, but I was reminded of how it began. While strolling through a riverside farming village, I saw a young boy with a shovel.

I remembered my own childhood, when I spent more than a year digging a hole behind my house. Each day, I dug a little deeper. I had heard that a hole all the way through the earth would come out in China. Eventually I gave up, resigned to the fact that I would never reach the far side of the earth.

The Chinese boy looked up and smiled at me as if to say, "I have been waiting. What took you so long?" I realized that I had indeed made it, all the way to the other side of the planet.

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