Yichang

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The famous Gezhouba Hydra Project (Gezhouba Dam) and the Three Gorges Dam is only 40 km upstream. The city is 120 km away from Jingzhou in highway and 167 km in waterway. It serves as a major transit port along the middle reaches of Yangtze River.

History:
With more than 7,000 or 8,000 years of history; called as "the throat of Chuan (namely Sichuan province) and E (namely Hubei province)", Yichang was known as Yiling in ancient times. Historical records that, in the year 278 B. C., during the Warring States period, the Qin general Bai Qi set fire to Yiling. This implies that Yiling had already become a city of some size as far back as more than 2,000 years ago. Like Shashi (Jingzhou), also an ancient battlefield for centuries, with a history of 2,400 years. It was made a county first in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), and its status was afterwards elevated to that of a prefecture. It again became a county in 1735, during the Qing Dynasty.
The city began to prosper, though lopsidedly, in 1876, the second year of the Qing Emperor Guangxu's reign when it was opened to foreign trade as a trading port after the Opium War with Britain and the imperial government set up a navigation company here. The imperialist powers also came to build wharves to handle their goods. In all the years before 1949 when new China was founded, however, Yichang's wharf area was only less than half a kilometer in length and its wharves were so poorly equipped that no ships could moor for direct loading and unloading. After 1949, more than 50 wharves have been constructed at the port so that its wharf area is now over 15 kilometers long. The wharves can handle dozens of 2,000-ton vessels simultaneously.With the commissioning of the shiplocks at Gezhouba, Yichang can nowadays admit cargo ships of the 10,000-ton class as well as large passenger steamers. Loading and unloading have been mechanized.

Yichang Today:
Yichang has undergone renovation and expansion in recent years, especially since the start of the Gezhouba water control project. New streets and factory and residential buildings have linked its urban and suburban industrial districts together. It now developed itself into one of China's medium-sized industrial cities and an internationally noted light industry city. Its 300 factories -metallurgical, machine-building, shipbuilding, textile, chemical, power-generating, electronic, instrument and meter, pharmaceutical, rubber, paper-making, etc.-- turn out a wide variety of products, many of which sell readily both at home and abroad.

Gegouba Dam:
The experimental dam of the Three Gorges Project (TGP) -- the Gezhouba Dam Hydro Electric Project is located at the lower end of the Three Gorges in the suburbs of Yichang, 38 km downstream of the TGP.
Electricity power for development of China
The construction of the Gezhouba Dam project started on December 30, 1970 and ended on December 10, 1988. The dam is 2606.5 meters long and 53.8 meters high, with a total storage capacity of 1.58 billion m3 and a maximum flood discharging capability of 110,000 m3/s. The two hydroelectric plants have 21 generating units with a total installed capacity of 2.715 million kw and an annual output of 15.7 billion kwh, which is transmitted to Shanghai, Henan Province, Hunan Province, Wuhan City, etc.

The annual one-way shipping capacity of the navigation facilities is 50 million tons and the total investment was 4.848 billion Chinese currency yuan (US$0.557 billion). The Gezhouba Dam Project is a cascade which regulates the tailwater flow from the TGP and improves the conditions between the two dams. After completion of the TGP, the annual guaranteed output of electricity from the Gezhouba Hydro Power Plant will be increased by about 430,000kw. Therefore the two projects considered as twins through thick and thin.
Calm lake
The dam has several sluice-gates, or ship locks. Some sluice-gates are used for accumulating water for irrigation during fraught seasons; some function for generating electricity. But what is most interesting is how boats are lowered or raised by making use of locks. When a boat from the lower level enters a sluice-gate, the gate is closed and the boat is "locked in" between two gates. The water level rises gradually until it reaches a higher level. When the other gate opens, the boat has already climbed up to a higher level. Likewise, boats from a higher level could also easily get to the lower level. This scene has now become an added attraction for visitors.

Local Product:
Local produce is seedless orange, much exported to Japan and Southeast Asia. Terra cotta wares, mushroom, black tea, garden plants and decorations, are among those renowned local specialties.