I am in the White Crane Ridge Underwater Museum near the city of Fuling. The museum is the strangest sight
here – it’s under 40 metres of water on the side of the Three Gorges Dam*.
I’ve known the museum director, Huang Dejian, since before the museum existed.
The last time I saw him, the Three Gorges Dam was still under construction 450 kilometres down the river.
Fuling is at the junction of the Yangtze and the Wu Rivers.
In the mid-1990s it felt sleepy and isolated. There was no main road or railway line.
The Yangtze ferries took seven hours to reach Chongqing, the nearest large city.
Foreigners were rare – if I ate my lunch in the town centre, a crowd often came to watch me.
The city had one escalator, one nightclub, and no traffic lights. I didn’t know anybody with a car.