today i am very pleased to show you three gorges of yangtze river.atfirst i’ll have a brief introduction of yangtze river, the yangtzeriver, the biggest river in china, the third longest in the world,starts with the tuotuo river at the roof of the world -qinghai-tibetplateau, takes in countless rivers, and flows eastward across theinterior of china. with an overall length of more than 6,300kilometers, the yangtze river, next only to the amazon and the nile, isthe third biggest river in the world and is a cradle that breeds theancient civilization of the chinese nation.qutang gorge is the smallest and shortestgorge, but grandest of the three. the yangtze river, mighty and rapidhere is suddenly contained like "a thousand seas poured into one cup",as the song dynasty poet su tungpo described the spectacle. high on theboth bank, at a place called bellows gorge, are a series of crevices.this area is said to have been the home of an ancient tribe whosecustom was to place the coffins of their crevices, some containingbronze swords, armour and other artifacts, but the coffins are believedto date back as far as the warring states period (475bc----221bc) downstream from the zigzagging wuxia gorge is xiling gorge which stretches78 kilometers eastward and the cliffs on either side rise to just over900 meters. xiling gorge is awesome with its dangerous rapids, shoals,reefs, sharp turns, billowy whirlpools. the water at one point is soturbulent that it seems to be boiling during the flood season. xilinggorge in the east consists of several small gorges. on the top ofanother is a rock that looks like a sword. on the crag of the northbank are two pieces of brown rock, which are named bull's liver andhorse' lung, whose shape they take. next does the lantern shadow gorge,which has four rocks, resemble monk xuan zang and his threedisciples---monkey, piggy and sandy in the classic chinese adventuresof the four on their way to india to obtain buddhist scriptures.
