ABSTRACT
In this dark travel essay posted on the Planet Drum website, Berg shares eyewitness observations and launches a no-holds-barred critique of China’s massive industrialization and especially of the Three Gorges Dam Project, under construction in 2001 when Berg visited the Yangtze River. This dystopian dispatch quotes a local resident who comments, “China is like the Titanic. The current regime believes it is invulnerable, [but it is] about to hit an iceberg.” The only possibility for a positive outcome that Berg can muster amid the “eye-burning, throat-scratching, nose-stuffing smog” is to wonder if the Chinese people will begin to feel that the Mandate of Heaven has been withdrawn from the Red Dynasty.
