Yangtze River Chinese Restaurant, Aberdeen

Advantages: Knowledge Culture Adventure
Disadvantages: Fog

...and work along its banks. Almost half the crops eaten by the Chinese are grown along the fertile banks of the River Yangtze including rice, wheat, cotton and maize. But the first impression of the River Yangtze at Zhenjang as we boarded the MV Victoria Rose at 10.30pm is industry, factories, rusting freight and cargo ships, ferries, cruise ships and the lasting memory of smog. The MV Victoria Rose was comfortable and spotlessly clean and a very welcoming sight after our long coach journey. The cabins were a reasonable size with very sleep inducing beds and adequate bathrooms –complete with a wet-room which I loathe – television, telephone and efficient air conditioning. I stress the importance of air conditioning in China in general and on the River Yangtze in particular. The temperature during these eight days at the end of September... Read review

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Advantages: Relaxing, beautiful and cheap
Disadvantages: Getting up at 5am every day

...I am spending this year teaching English in Chongqing, China. At the beginning of this month, the Chinese had a week’s holiday for National Day – the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (this year is the 55th anniversary). I spent most of my National Day holiday on the Yangtze River. Some fellow British teachers came to Chongqing from around the country and on Sunday evening ten of us boarded a big boat which would take us down the river to the town of Yichang, where we were to arrive early on Wednesday morning. Chongqing is the starting place of all Yangtze River cruises (or of course the end if you go upriver). This is because it’s where the Jialing River meets the Yangtze to increase its size, and it’s also not far from the start of the famous Three Gorges. This seems to be Chongqing’s main (only?) selling... Read review

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Advantages: Unique, fascinating, occasionally beautiful
Disadvantages: Disappearing as you read this

...to the hillsides above the river, a foetid growth of stained concrete apartment blocks, some with incongruous mock-pagoda cornicing, ugly industrial buildings and unrelenting grime. Then, among the many blasts of hooters and churnings of wake in the busy waterway around us, come a louder hoot and a churning from our own vessel, and we are under way. * Strictly speaking, this is not the Yangtze. To the Chinese the name only applies to the lower reaches, the full length being known as Chang Jiang (the long river), but few outside China would recognise it as such, so I have followed Western usage in calling it the Yangtze throughout. The Yangtze is one of the world's great rivers, the third longest after the Nile and the Amazon. Over three hundred million people live along its banks, more than the populations of, for example, the USA... Read review

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