Yangtze River is the biggest river in China and the longest river in the world. World famous the Three Gorges is located the east of Sichan Basin. The Three Gorges on the Yangtze River, from Kuimen in Fengjie County, Chongqing, to Nanjin Pass in Yichang, Hebei Provice, consist of the Qutang Gorges in the west, the Wuxia Gorges in the middle and the Xiling Gorges in the east, extending 193 kilometers. The key water control conservancy project on the Three Gorges, also known as the Great Dam at the Three Gorges, is located at the town of Sandouping of the Xiling Gorge, some 620 kilometers east of the central part of the city of Chongqing. When the water level rises to a height of 175 meters at the Great Dam in the year 2009 according to plan.This will materialize what is described in a poem by Mao Zedong, "A Dam will be built across the upstream to the west, / Bring Wushan Mountains' clouds and rain to rest,/ A lake will appear around the deep gorge's crest".

Since the early 1990s, the 620 kilometers of the Yangtze River has become a gold tourist route. As early as in 1982 the Three Gorges on the Yangtze was listed as one of China's areas famous for their natural scenery and cultural relics; and in 1991 this area was put on the top of a list of China's 40 best places for their tourist attractions.

The Qutang Gorges

The Qutang Gorges is the first of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River. The gorge is 8 kilometers long, beginning from Kuimen in the west and ending at Daxi in the east. It is noted for its grandeur and beauty.Kuimen, or the Kui Gate, consists of two mountains facing each other on either side of the Yangteze situated to the east of the county seat of Fengjie, and the two mountains can be seen on the southern gate of Fengjie. The mountain on the northern bank is Chijia Mountain, which looks like a giant peach, and the mountain on the southern bank is Baiyan Mountain, a mountain of white rocks. Both mountains are about a thousand kilometers high froming a bottleneck on the surging waters of the turbulent Yangtze.

The cliff walls of Kuimen towering over the Yangtze are 350 meters high. Twelve places on the cliffs are covered with carvings made from the Southern Song Dynasty to the time of the Republic,totaling some 200 square meters. An inscription Song Zhong Xing Sheng De Song is still well preserved. Another inscription saying "Kuimen is the most magnificent in the world, and ships sail through rapidly with east" is the calligraphic work by Su Yuanliang, a modern calligrapher. The eight Chinese characters of enormous size are written in the Li style of the Han Dynasty. There are some scenic spots on the southern bank of the river, such as Mengliang Ladders and the Phoenix Fountain, and these places can be reached by car. On the other bank across the river there are remains of ancient plank roads built along the perpendicular rock-faces and giant Chinese characters engraved on the cliffs over the plank roads.

Going downstream along the Yangtze one may find gorges within gorges. On the norghern bank there are coffins of ancient Ba people suspended high on cliffs on the bank at the Fengxing Gorges, and the Cuokai Gorge on the southern bank is related to King Yu in a legend. Ancient trees and vines cover the cliffs of the gorges and make the mountains green all the year round, but maples may paint some sections of the gorges red as flames when their leaves turn red in the fall.

Eight kilometers east of Kuimen is the Daxi, a stream running from south to north and joins the Yangtze here. Tombs of people of the New Stone Age have been found here in large numbers by archeologists and even today travelers may still find remnants of ancient stone tools scattered around. This area is known as the site of "the Daxi Culture"

The Wuxia Gorge

The Wuxia Gorge is named after Wushan Mountain. The beautiful gorge runs 45 kilometers from the mouth of the Daning River in Wushan County, Chongqing, to Guandukou in Badong County. Huibei province, with the Bianchengxi serving as the dividing line between Chongqing and Hubei.

Along the Wuxia Gorges, tweleve peaks are the best attractions to tourists. On the nortghern bank of this part of the Yangtze from west to east stand six peaks: Denglong, Shengquan, Chaoyun,Shennu, Songluan, and Jixian; on the southern bank only three peaks are visible to the passenger on a ship; Feifeng, Cuiping and Juhe, while the three other peaks, Jiangtan, Qiyun and Shangsheng are hidden behind the mountains as they stand a little way off from the Yangtze, Denglong, 1,210 meters above sea level is the highest peak among them, while the 940-meters Qiyun is the lowest. The 940 meters Shennv or the Goddess Peak is also known as Greeting the Rosy Clouds Peak, because its column like top seems always to be greeting the rosy rosy clouds both at sunrise and at sunset. It is named the Goddess had fallen in love with King Xiang of the state Chu, and they enjoyed their meeting in Wushan Mountain, and in his dream the king was told by the goddess that she would appear as the cloud at dawn and as rain at sunset. As the Wuxia Gorge is long and valley deep, and the area is crowded with piles and piles of mountains and peaks, and so the area is very often shrouded in mist or a curtain of rain. Therefore, the clouds and rain of Wushan became the theme of many poems and paintings in Chinese history.

"The Wuxia Gorges is layers upon layers of mountains and peaks, which are famous for their magnificent scenery, the twelve peaks of Wushan Mountains." The fifteen large Chinese characters, said to be written by Zhuge Liang(Kongming), prime minister of the State of Shu(221-265), are inscribed on a rock cliff of the Jixian Peak over the river, and therefore is known as "the Kongming Tablet". But in fact the first six characters were carved during the reign of Emperor Jiajing (1522-1567)of the Ming Dynasty, and the last nine characters have almost been worn away which makes studies almost impossible.

The Xiling Gorge

The Xiling Gorge in Hubei province, the last of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze, is 75 kilometers long from the mouth of the Xiang Stream to Nanjin Pass. In the gorges there is a break of 35 kilometers of open valley, so the gorge is actually 40 kilometers long¡£And therefore ancient people were justified to belive the Wu Gorge to be the longest. As the poem says, "Among the Three Gorges to the east of Ba, the longest is the Wu Gorge" In the past, the Xiling Gorge used to be a dangerous part of the Yangtze for boat people because of its numerous dangerous shoals, reefs and whirlpools in the river. But thanks to efforts made in dredging the waterway after liberation in 1949, especially since the completion of the Gezhouba Dam Project, this part of the Yangtze has become a safe and beautiful waterway.

In the Xiling Gorge, west of the open valley stand the bingshu Baijian Gorge(the Gorge of Military Books and Swords) and the Niugan Mafei Gorge( the Gorge of Ox Livers and Horse Lungs), and east of the open valley are the Huangniu Gorge(the Yellow Ox Gorge) and the Dengying Gorge( the Lamp Shadow Gorge). All these names suggest their appearances.

The most famous historical sites, cultural relics and natural scenery in this area are the Huangling Temple and the Sanyou Cave.

The Huangling Temple is located on the southern bank of the Yangtze, 620 kilometers from the central part of Chongqing. The temple is the largest ancient building in the Xiling Gorges area, first built during the Spring and Autumn period770-476 B.C), rebuilt in the Tang Dynasty and repaired in 1618 during the Ming Dynasty. Inside the gate there are the opera building housing a stage, King Yu's Palace and Memorial Temple of Zhuge Liang. In the memorial temple these used to be a stone tablet of the temple. But it is a pity that the tablet is no longer there. There stands a three-meter tablet on the west side of King Yu's Palace; on the tablet is inscribed "Note on Dredging the River" carved in 1773. After recent repairs, the temple looks very magnificent.

The Sanyou Cave is located on the northern bank of the Yangtze ten kilometers from the urban area of Yichang. The cave was the place where Bai Juyi and other two famous poets of the Tang Dynasty gathered and later they wrote poems about their visit to the cave. Therefore the cave was named Sanyou cave, meaning "cave visited by three". Later three scholars of the Song Dynaty. Su Xun and his sons Su Shi and Su Zhe, also visited the cave, and their visit was known as the "later visit by three". A path leads from the cave up the mountain to the site of Liu Feng City. At Nanjin Guan there is Zhixiting, Pavilion of Extreme Happiness, and the Battle Drum Mound of Zhang Fei, a general of the State of Shu. On the mound, people can see the Yangtze east of Nanjin Pass suddenly widened from 300 meters to 2200 meters, flowing further east on the land of Hubei.