We shot down a river that is about to disappear forever. It already may be gone.

During our 1995 tour of China, we took a four day cruise down the Yangtze River to see the famous Three Gorges, an area that is soon going to be inundated as the largest dam the world has ever seen will cause the river to rise more than five hundred feet.

One of the many tributaries of the Yangtze is the Shennong Stream, a little river that runs about 30 miles, a narrow waterway cutting through spectacular cliffs on both sides of our boats as we headed downward. Here the water is clear, unlike the muddy Yangtze. Here we could see lots of fish from our little boats as we glided sometimes through calm waters and then shot through some rapids , barely missing huge boulders as the Shennong dipped sharply downward through the narrow passes. In the cliffs above us we could see coffins of Chinese people who died two thousand years ago, their remains put into wooden boxes stuck in crevices high, high up.

This was one spectacular three hour trip. What we didn't see were the men who had to manually pull our boats back upstream for another descent the next day. That would be a picture: three or four men on each bank, totally naked, pulling heavy ropes attached to each boat, up the rushing waters of the Shennong. And singing all the time. It would take them many more hours going upstream than we did going down.

I'll show you what we saw on this very fast ride we had, an adventure that will be gone before long. The huge dam now being built on the Yangtze will cause this and many other tributaries to disappear, along with hundreds of towns and cities, and thousands of buried archeological treasures. More than two million Chinese are being relocated right now, moved to higher ground as the flood gates will soon open.

By the year 2005, all of this will be gone.