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PROLOGUE

THE MAN WAS DEAD BY THE TIME HIS BODY HIT THE SWIRLING zi River just below the first of the Three Gorges With no panicked atte rock, with no last agonized breaths to endeavor, with no searing pain of water being gulped into lungs, the body was si current How quickly he cooled in the chilly pools Hoiftly he moved in these first few minutes with no obstacles in his way

Each ray with age, factories that belched fetid smoke, and drainpipes that spewed loathsoe into the river As he went, his skin wrinkled and began to peel Internal gases for him afloat He often traveled as much as thirty feet per second, and the top of his head pounded into jagged rocks and rough cliff edges, tearing away tufts of hair and scalp But other ti shallow and treacherous to navigate More than once the body was caught in the swirl of a whirlpool or on the edge of a sandbar before a shift in the current or the ripple of waves fro vessel freed him

Did anyone see this shui da bang—water log—in its pitiless ration to the sea? The waters of this snake of a river had a drainage of more than 700,000 square miles, nearly one-fifth of China’s total landmass It divided the country into north and south in zi directly affected one-third of China’s population, more than 400 million people—nearly one of every thirteen people on the face of the earth So of course people saw the body More than once a fishere spotted the flash of ivory flesh bobbing in the end said white dolphins were girls who’d been transformed into water creatures Today the baiji left on this river could be counted in the mere dozens, and some said that none had survived the pollution and the boat traffic Could that flash of white possibly have been a baiji? A little ash in the earth?

Soon the body entered the city lireen current of the Daning River poured into the e ferries bore men and women up and down the river to work, visit relatives, find better lives Naked children played on inner tubes, laughing and teasing each other One boy bumped into the corpse and for ato be dead Hadn’t they all done the dead man’s float at one time or another? The boy kicked at the body, and when he felt his toes sink in, then in so fast, not onceto his friends his horror at what he’d encountered He siside one of the small boats that carried tourists fro If he sh, if he waved heartily, if he called out “Welconers snapped their photos, then he ed up the Daning to see the Lesser Three Gorges

The body whooshed into the Wu Gorge, the second of the Three Gorges The cliffs were so high that the sun barely penetrated down to the river High, high up rose the Goddess Peak, which rese before a pillar, with eleven peaks nearby The local people believed this to be the ehter of the Queen Mother of the West, and her eleven hand theon a cloud one day, she’d discovered twelve dragons wreaking havoc on the river, causing hardship and death to mortal men and women She called upon Yu the Great, endowed him with the power to control weather and es to lead the waters to the sea Today the Goddess Peak was reputed to bring luck to those who glimpsed her in the shrouded mists, but there was no luck for the body, just the constant pull to the sea, as though Yu the Great himself had ordained it

But wasn’t that just a ma not only to her people but to the outside world? In a country where legend, history, and politics were aloven together, zi, which was the nah the ancient fiefdo Jiang, Long River, or Da Jiang, Great River, but those who lived on its banks had named every stretch of its 4,000 miles to reflect the nature of the water in that place—the Wild Yak River, the River of Golden Sand, Beautiful River, Ba River

All this was beyond the co piece of flesh Soentle waters, of peaceful drift, of quiet shorelines and tranquil coves where a lone farmer worked a tiny patch, where a wife—her pants rolled above her knees—washed her family’s clothes on the rocks, where an older sisterwas reduced to the sun, the sky, and the prih rock But there were cities too, where aparte and boats of all sizes vied for position Superficially it , being with fa with a pretty girl, sitting with an ailing parent—but a sense of urgency hung over everything

High on the cliffs, swatches of white paint at 177 ht of the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Da, everything below those lines would be inundated Between Yichang and Chongqing, well over a million people would be ood connections—would get residence certificates for cities Others would be transplanted to nens h-rise that stood out stark and white far above the future high-water mark The unfortunate ones—the majority, in fact—would be sent to distant provinces Promises had been made, but already some who’d been sent afar had returned with tales of hardship What would become of them now? Could those people, who’d suffered so much in this tumultuous land, suffer any more?

And could the body, which continued on, sufferboats, his skin shredded and tore After his shirt disintegrated, birds swooped down and picked at the flesh on his back As he traveled into the Xiling Gorge, the last of the Three Gorges, turtles and fish nibbled and ripped at the soft parts of his face—the eyelids, lips, and ears

Suddenly he was at the dam site itself This project, when coreatest man-made edifices in the history of the world The whole site was a iant machines, concrete, and steel Men and woher inch by inch toward its final height of 607 feet and over a mile in width A sense of purpose iravel, every ton of earth moved, every mile of rebar tied

down, every lock coreatest achievee to the world of her supreenerate electricity equivalent to eighteen nuclear power plants This was not just nationalist power but power in its rawest, truest form