| Nationalities: | United States. |
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Photos and Story by Will Stauffer-Norris
This is the fourth pig carcass that has washed up in Dead Pig Eddy. The bloated creature rocks gently up and down against the beach about 10 feet away from our brewing morning coffee. The pig must go, it’s decided, so Lao Tang and Bob tie a piece of p-cord to a stiff leg and offer the other end to me. Just tie a quick-release knot to your kayak they say. No problem.
I paddle out into the current, towing the leaden weight of the sow. Everything is fine until I hit the eddyline, the big water powerful and shifting against my hull. In the boils, the tension disappears and the pig sinks out of sight. A tense moment follows: Where will it surface? Suddenly there is an eruption of dead pig right next to my boat. I squeal and take few quick paddle strokes. The line goes taut again, jerking me to the side, and for a moment I have horrible visions of flipping headfirst into a mass of decomposing pork. A few more frantic pulls, the knot finally gives way, and the pig heads downstream to Burma.
This is the Salween, one of the most beautiful and magical rivers in China.
I lived in the rugged Salween valley for two months, working for Last Descents River Expeditions, a company founded by American Travis Winn. His mission is to bring Chinese to see their rivers before dams and development irrevocably change these wild places.
But wild is a relative term on the lower Salween River. People live and farm everywhere along the river, and only the rockiest and steepest sections are left untouched. Travis insists that we always wear shoes on the beaches. I’m skeptical of this rule until I nearly step on a hypodermic needle, a common sight among the ubiquitous scraps of plastic and discarded fishing line. Some days, smoke from burning sugarcane fields fills the valley, making it difficult to breathe. Most of the clients don’t realize that this isn’t wilderness as we Americans think of it. To them, the air is fresh, much cleaner than it is in Beijing.
Despite the air and water pollution endemic to China, the Salween remains one of the longest undammed rivers in the world. China and Burma both aim to change that. China alone has proposed as many as 13 dams on the Salween, which carves the 13,000-foot-deep “Grand Canyon of the East” through western Yunnan province. The country has been on a dam-building tear for the last 60 years, constructing half of the world’s total dams. The Salween River so far has been spared by its remote location, but the central government has drawn up plans to turn this isolated river valley into a series of stair-stepping reservoirs.
This is part of the reason we’re here: to show influential Chinese these rivers before it’s too late. Our guests are the new rich of China, products of the economic boom that has brought China through leaps and bounds into the modern world. We have a car company executive, a fashion store mogul, the owner of a wedding dress conglomerate, and a foot massage magnate who calls at the last minute asking to bring a friend. The plus-one turns out to be a former Miss China, beauty pageant representative of 1.3 billion people. She’s quiet and friendly and about two feet taller than every other Chinese woman. We are sufficiently impressed to ask her to sign our drybags.
https://www.facebook.com/travis.winn.35
http://lastdescents.com/index3.html
http://www.canoekayak.com/photos/saving-chinas-salween-river-one-trip-time/
Uni Oregon