UP CHINA'S NOT-SO-LAZY RIVER\A heart-stopping cruise of Yangtze's Three Gorges.

Byline: Jerry Farlow Special to the Daily News

The Yangtze River is roughly 4,000 miles from its source to its mouth. It starts as a trickle in a remote region of the vast Tibetan highlands, a region larger than the whole of western Europe where, fed by melting snows from countless glaciers, it gushes down across the Chinhai Plateau into an alpine plain sparsely inhabited by Tibetan herders tending their sheep and yak.

On this plain runs the ancient tea road, a primitive path cut in stone that once carried tea from ancient China into Tibet and the world beyond. The river, ever wider, ever stronger, then plunges southward off the "roof of the world" through remote valleys and gorges that few have ever seen. It is here where it picks up countless square miles of chocolate-brown mud to be carried to the sea - and it is here where the river takes the name "River of Golden Sand."

Now, after pouring southward down the eastern face of the Chinhai plateau through desolate gorges, it makes an abrupt 180-degree turn to the north only to be followed by another about-face southward.

Then it makes up its mind and turns eastward, cascading down another 10,000 feet to the fabled Red Basin of Szechwan and on to Chongqing (chung-king), the chief industrial city of southwest China, and a city known in recent times as the place where Chiang Kai-shek holed up during World War II. Although by this time the Yangtze has traveled over 2,000 miles, it still has almost another 2,000 miles to go before reaching the East China Sea near Shanghai.

Cruises up and down the Yangtze have taken on a sort of urgency in recent years with construction under way for the Three Gorges Dam, scheduled for completion in 2008. The water behind the dam will rise 600 feet and the reservoir created will stretch all the way back to Chongqing, 850 miles away. Although more than a million people will be forced to resettle, the dam will bring unparalleled benefits to China in terms of flood control, generation of electricity, shipping, water supply and aquaculture.

I began my own Yangtze River odyssey at Chongqing. It is here that the river becomes tame enough for commercial navigation, and it was here that my wife and I boarded the river cruiser Victoria I for an 850-mile trek downstream to the ancient city of Wuhan through the fabled Three Gorges region.

The ship quickly left behind the hustle and bustle of Chongqing and a few miles downstream, the river was squeezed to just a few hundred feet wide between sheer cliffs dotted with straw-hatted peasants tending tiny plots of vegetables. Some were carrying buckets of muddy Yangtze water up the steep slopes, some were hoeing and others were harvesting. Never once did I ever see an idle person along the entire stretch of the Yangtze.

Along the Yangtze watershed live more than 350 million people - one-third of all people in China and one of every 15 people on earth. It is the main street of China; it has been estimated that cargo on the Yangtze and its tributaries accounts for 80 percent of China's total land shipping.

"To understand China, you must know the Yangtze," a Taiwanese woman and former Chinese citizen told me as the timeless landscape of China passed before us. "All Chinese learn as children the legends of the Three Kingdoms and much of that history took place in these parts."

I knew this to be true. Although the Three Kingdom era lasted less than a century (A.D. 220-280), the epic stories surrounding that era are as familiar to the Chinese as the narratives of the Trojan War are to the Greeks or the legends of knights and round tables are to Western folklore.

However, it wasn't the ancient Chinese dynasties that occupied our minds, but the Three Gorges: the Qutang, the Witches, and the Xiling, that lie downstream. It's a stretch of 120 miles where the Yangtze churns and boils its way through rocky canyons in the Qinling Mountains - limestone faces rising 4,000 feet straight up like some colossal Gothic cathedral from the water. There are no banks of the river here - the sheer cliffs plunge straight into the raging water.

In times past, more than a few boatmen met their end on unforeseen shoals of this sampan graveyard. Before the age of steam and gasoline engines, teams of coolies, known as "trackers" were used to pull boats upstream through the Gorges, literally inches at a time, through whirlpools and rapids. Scores of trackers were harnessed like oxen to towlines of braided bamboo, sometimes up to half a mile long, and pulled the huge junks against the raging waters.

The trackers lived on the edge - often they lost their footing on the sheer cliffs high on the rocky ledges above the river and pulled their mates, who were all tied together, into the raging river. Today, one can still see the towpaths where these poor souls toiled their entire lives and can only marvel at the fact that not only could they traverse them at all, but that they could pull tons of ship upstream at the same time.

Nowadays, although one can sometimes see smaller boats being pulled upstream by their crews, the old vision of endless junks being pulled up river by countless coolies has been replaced by countless riverboats transporting visitors - mostly from the United States, Japan, Taiwan and China - on three- to five-day treks back and forth between Chongqing and Wuhan.

The Victoria I represents the new breed of riverboat on the Yangtze. Our cabin was clean, stylish and comfortable. It had a picture window, air-conditioning and even a color TV. The food aboard was good - mainly Chinese cuisine with the exception of breakfast, which had both Chinese and Western offerings. The ship even had an exercise room complete with a step machine and treadmill, something the trackers of yesteryear would no doubt find interesting.

When our boat finally entered Qutang Gorge, the first and the most perilous of the Three Gorges, I didn't see the endless hulks of rivercraft splattered on the rocks I had come to expect. In fact, I didn't see the Gorge at all. As one approaches Qutang Gorge, the river appears to come to a dead end. Then, as the Yangtze often does, it makes an abrupt turn and sheer cliffs with overhanging precipices appear majestically before us.

Cruising through the Gorges at night between sheer cliffs only a few feet away can get your juices flowing in a hurry. The first night, the Victoria I led a convoy of several ships - each with two gigantic spotlights that continuously scanned the limestone cliffs for protruding rocks and ledges - through narrow waterway. Navigational lights dotted the cliffsides on both banks. Occasionally, a small house would appear along the river edge and would get a direct hit by one of the huge spotlights; once, the Victoria I sounded its ear-deafening horn just a few feet from one of these huts. I could imagine the entire family raising 10 feet off their beds.

The next day, the passengers took a break from the Yangtze and took a side trip up the Daning River, a picturesque turquoise-blue tributary of the Yangtze. Boarding motorized sampans that carried about 20 people each, we headed upstream through what are called the Lesser Gorges.

Although not as large as the Three Gorges of the Yangtze, the Lesser Gorges are more spectacular, steeper with sharper features.

We soon discovered the inboard engine on our sampan didn't have enough power to ford the rapids, so a towline was thrown ashore and a few trackers aided in the effort.

While bare-backed trackers strained at the towline, crew members on deck fought the current by pushing with large bamboo poles, thrusting them deep into the stream and leaning on them until their bodies touched the deck. Suddenly a pole snapped and one of the crew members, just a few feet from me, careened overboard into the raging water. In a flash, he was swept downstream.

I rushed to the side of the boat and looked back just in time to see him grab a pole thrust to him by one of the polers on the sampan directly behind us. The guy pulled himself out of the water onto the boat, ran to the other side, and jumped to a large boulder at the side of the river. He then ran back to our boat, hopped across another couple of boulders and leaped back onto our boat, where he then grabbed another pole and continued poling.

I asked him later if he often fell in the river. He laughed and said, "From time to time."

Although most people take a Yangtze cruise to see the Three Gorges, the many towns and villages along the river are an adventure in themselves. For us, there was the hubbub of a food bazaar in Chongqing, pushing our way through a sea of people, inhaling the pungent aroma from countless hot pots teeming with spiced fish heads, eels and snake meat. And there was paddling a dragon boat in Ziqui, (zig-way) where we joined former trackers in Dragon Boat Races on the Yangtze.

A few days later, the Victoria I passed through the last of the Three Gorges, Xiling Gorge, and the site of what will be the world's largest dam, generating the most power.

"What do you think about the dam?" a young Chinese woman from Beijing asked me as we watched the massive construction activity on shore.

"Kind of big, huh?" was all I could say.

It is difficult to fathom such an undertaking. If there are no complications, the dam should be completed by 2008.

"I hope I'm still alive when it's done," I added.

"Well," she said, "If you are, you will be able to go up the Yangtze to Chongqing by sailboat on Yangtze Lake."

It would be an interesting prospect.

On Location

Victoria Cruises Inc. offers Yangtze cruises from March through early November. Downstream cruises will be four days and three nights, from Chongqing to Wuhan, and prices range from $620 to $1,785. Upstream voyages (six days and five nights) will run from $560 to $1,665. Prices are per person, double occupancy. Total cost for shore excursions: $65, per person. The company operates two 154-passenger ships, the Victoria I and the Victoria II. Information: [phone].

Regal China Cruises Inc. operates three 258-passenger, German-built vessels, featuring three- to six-day itineraries through the gorges. Prices range from $800 to $2,000, per person. Information: [phone].

China can be a hard country to travel in independently, especially if you don't speak Chinese. An escorted group tour is a good idea for most travelers. For those cruising the Yangtze who also want to visit other areas of the country, a guided tour will make such traveling connections and arrangements much simpler.

Here are several veteran tour operators to China, each of which includes Yangtze cruises (Victoria and Regal China, among others) in their programs: Pacific Bestour, [phone]; Abercrombie & Kent, [phone]; Globus, [phone]; Japan & Orient Tours, [phone]; Maupintour, [phone]; Olson-Travelworld, [phone]; Pacific Delight, [phone]; Travcoa, [phone]; Uniworld, [phone].

The best times to travel on the Yangtze are spring and autumn. Summers can be very hot and humid, winters damp and cold.

Be sure to bring an umbrella and/or rain jacket; the gorges' area is often misty and damp. And bring much more film than you think you'll need. The gorges are very photogenic, and each turn around the bend brings a scene you're sure is more awesome than the last. Also, slide film can be hard to find.

Before going, check with your physician about shots for hepatitis A and about anti-malaria pills. Also, the Centers for Disease Control recommends the normal childhood vaccines - such as measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus and polio - be up to date.

For more information, contact the China National Tourist Office, 333 W. Broadway, Suite 201, Glendale, Calif. 91204; [phone] or [phone]; fax [phone].

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Photo (1-2--color) In little boats at left, passengers get ready to race their dragon boats on the Yangtze. Inset, passing through Dragon Gate Gorge on a tour up a Yangtze tributary. (3--color) In the town of Ziqui, the memorial hall of Qu Yuan, China's ancient poet, overlooks the muddy Yangtze. (4--color) Ghoulish statues line the path through the temples of "Ghost City," in the river town of Fengdu. (5) A boatman poles up the Daning River, a tributary of the muddy Yangtze. A few minutes later, the boatman fell overboard. Susan Farlow/Special to the ddaily News Box On Location (see text) Map Three Gorges Dam