Before the Deluge : The Vanishing World of the Yangtze's Three Gorges by Deirdre Chetham (Palgrave Macmillan)

After graduating from Harvard, Deirdre Chetham went on to study anthropology at Columbia University. She became interested in the Three Gorges “when China was taking its first steps toward economic and political opening”. As she was trying to decide on her thesis topic and where in China to do her field work, she made a chance meeting with an employee of Lindblad Travel, a luxury tour company whose ships often traveled along the Yangtze River.  The company hired Chetham who believed she was qualified to lecture on Chinese archeology. 

Since then, Chetham has spent more than twenty years traveling up and down the Yangtze River. She has “attempted to provide a glimpse of the history and the current situation of a remote area, as the people who live here stand on the brink of immense personal and social disruption”.

Before the Deluge was first published in 2002. The subtitle of her book is The Vanishing World of the Yangtze’s Three Gorges. It is the story of the planning and building of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Chetham follows the project throughout history. A project that was first suggested by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen in 1919. He said the goal was to industrialize the nation and improve navigation. 

Chetham continues discussing the history of the dam from the beginning of its construction under Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, followed by the Japanese occupation who surveyed the Three Gorges and came up with the Otani plan, a dam project that would continue after Japan’s anticipated victory. Chetham also hits upon the vicarious truce between Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government and the communist government as they banded together to oust the occupying Japanese. The nationalist government then invited the U.S. to help them on the project. 

Unfortunately, the Chinese Civil War started and construction of the dam was halted for another number of years. The plans for the Three Gorges Dam dam once again became national news during the eighties under Deng Xiaoping’s government. This time, progress seemed to be more or a reality than just a project on paper. 

Chetham had interviewed a number of people who would be affected by the construction of the dam but most of the locals seemed to view the project as yet another ambitious ploy by the Chinese government to show the world that China wasn’t an undeveloped country. They informed Chetham they survived the suffering caused by the Cultural Revolution, so a mass displacement would just be another hardship they would be forced to endure.

The dam was completed in 2006, four years after the publication of this book, and became fully functional in the summer of 2012. As of 2012, it has been the world’s largest power station in relation to installed capacity which is the amount of energy that a power station, or in this case, a dam, can produce. 

Before the Deluge is a fascinating history of one of man’s greatest projects ever undertaken. The environmental impact and the loss of archeological and cultural artifacts is still being debated today. The dam continues to raise the question for every developing country - should development in the name of progress take priority over the loss of culture and the displacement of a large number of its citizens? Do the benefits outweigh the negative impact on the people and the area? And most importantly, are the benefits of such a project sustainable? Only the future will be able to tell us. ~Ernie Hoyt