Yangtze River

Up the Yangtze River With a $50 Paddle As the Hai Nei Guan Guang 2 blasted its deafening foghorn and pulled into the Yangtze River port of Fengjie, I brimmed with confidence. Two days earlier, I had nervously boarded a similar workaday passenger boat along another leg of the Yangtze, no idea what was in store. But now, I knew the routine. I’d say san-deng (third-class), hand over some cash, receive a handwritten slip with my cabin number, step over sunflower-seed-spitting passengers camped on the floor and settle into whatever rock-hard bunk remained in a room of instant-noodle-slurping Chinese passengers. Soon enough, the ship would arrive at my destination — in this case, about 24 hours later in the mega-city of Chongqing. But for novice travelers in China, there is always a surprise. I entered Cabin 2012 to find its four bunks overflowing with a family of five and a fluffy white cat with butterscotch splotches. I returned to reception, typed “cabin full” into my Google Translate app, and a woman accompanied me back to the room. She addressed the slumbering family — did I mention it was 4 a.m.? — in Chinese. This prompted a boy to vacate his bunk and climb into one with his sister. His bed became mine. There was no apology or change of sheets. The mistake was mine: four beds didn’t mean four people. By the next morning I was in a better rhythm, making stunted conversation with the family via a phrase book and accepting a free meal in the ship’s dining room from a young physical education teacher who ordered a whole fish in pungent sauce from a menu on the wall I did not even know was a menu. From the deck, I gazed through a ubiquitous haze at new Yangtze River cities, the result of the Three Gorges Dam project, completed in 2006. I posed for cellphone photos with passengers amused by the presence of a non-Asian. I was an ignorant, hapless and occasionally clownish first-time tourist in the world’s most populous nation, and one of its most mysterious to Westerners. And I was enjoying (almost) every minute. Here was the daunting mission: a 10-day trip up the Yangtze River, taking trains and boats, for $50 a day, enough to pay for food, bottom-end hotels and public transport, but not enough for the organized tours and cruises that travelers commonly take through this part of the country. Along the way, I learned some key lessons that will help travelers avoid my mistakes. Don’t worry: you’ll still make plenty of your own. It’s Not Like Traveling Anywhere Else Getting ready for a trip through China, especially planning anything outside major cities like Shanghai and Nanjing, is unlike planning a trip elsewhere. The usual sources — guidebooks, Web searches, user review sites — either don’t provide the information you need or are in Chinese. Compared with, say, Southeast Asia, China has not been overrun, and thus well-documented, by independent travelers. So what should you do? First, learn how to use Google Translate. It works and is cheap to use, even if you have to turn on international roaming. Second, get a phrase book in which key phrases are written out in large-font Chinese characters. (Don’t count on your Mandarin pronunciation.) Third, learn how to count from 1 to 10 on (mostly) one hand as the Chinese do: this is how prices will be relayed you. (Online videos can help.) Fourth, familiarize yourself with the English pages of Elong.com and Ctrip.com, China-based online travel agencies, where you can find endless English-language listings for cheap Chinese hotels. I usually paid about $20 a night. Trust the Locals When I travel to far-off countries, I tend to guard my possessions maniacally. But everyone told me crime was a nonissue in China, and by the time I reached Fengjie (where I would be boarding the Hai Nei Gun Guang 2), I was taking them at their word. So when a portside shopkeeper offered to watch my bag for 5 renminbi (78 cents at 6.1 renminbi to the dollar), I thought, why not, and took off to explore the hilly town unburdened. But I had to come back when she closed at 6 p.m., and the boat wouldn’t pull in until 4 a.m. “Where can I wait?” I typed into Google Translate. It was as if a starter’s gun had been fired. She grabbed my suitcase and bolted across the street. I chased her down an alley full of drying clothes and rotting trash, into a wide-open door and up a decrepit staircase. In some parts of the world murder would have seemed imminent. But I trusted this woman. She led me to a family-run flophouse with crumbling walls and dirty, squat toilet bathrooms, but also bedrooms with crisp white sheets, working Internet and a TV with about 100 cable stations. It cost 30 renminbi, and it was perfect. I left my bags, computer included, and continued to explore Fengjie by night.