CHONGQING, CHINA - A group of “coolies” jumps to attention and charge our taxi when it pulls up in front of this city’s cruise ship terminal.

The coolies – street porters - have been a part of Chongqing from its beginning, carrying heavy packages and baggage up the steep granite hills this massive industrial city is built around.

While the term “coolie” – a Chinese word meaning “hard labour” - may be regarded by some as a derogatory term, here in Chongqing the little porters wear the name like a badge of honour.

The smallest of the coolies pushes aside his competitors and claims our bags – one so heavy it took the combined strength of a cab driver and a hotel porter to place in the car earlier. He affixes each bag to a short bamboo pole with a rope and with little effort picks up the heavy objects on his shoulders and heads off in the direction of a large vernacular, which takes passengers down to the city’s crowded port, where the cruise ship we are about to board for our long-anticipated Yangtze River cruise awaits.

Chongqing is where the crystal-clear Jailing River flows into the dominate, mocha-coloured Yangtze, the economic vein of inland China, and on which thousands of ships sail each year carrying cargo to world markets and passengers to the famed Three Gorges, the country’s fabulous fjords.

The Yangtze River Explorer, recently refurbished from a 300-passenger riverboat into a 124-passenger luxury cruise ship, is our choice for a three-day tour of the river, its gorges, recently completed dam project and what’s left of the ancient villages and towns flooded to make room for the world’s largest and most controversial hydro electric project.

Sometime during the night, while we’re nestled comfortably in our spacious cabin, the Explorer sets sail down the 5,800-kilometre long Yangtze, the third largest river in the world behind the Nile and Amazon, respectively, where 400 million people huddle in towns and cities along its banks.

Sichuan Province, which the Yangtze cuts through, is the cradle of Chinese civilization, a place of human activity for over 27,000 years, according to scholars.

Above: The mighty Yangtze River and its dramatic gorges are breathtaking.

Most of that activity has taken place along the shores of the mighty Yangtze, which begins flowing from the Tibetan Plateau, thousands of kilometres away, before spilling into the South China Sea at Shanghai.

Daylight reveals dozens of large and small ships jockeying for position along the river, which handles 60 per cent of the country’s inland shipping traffic, much of it transporting coal and rice, both of which are found in great abundance along the Yangtze. To show just how important the river is to China, consider this: half of the country’s crop production and 40 per cent of its most important staple, paddy rice are grown along its banks.

Our first excursion is to a resettlement town of Hong Yan, built to accommodate the thousands moved there from about 80 villages along the river in recent years. The families were moved from nearby Ghost Village, which became a submerged ghost town when the Yangtze reservoir reached its maximum height, 175 metres, in October, 2008.

“The road we are now driving on will not be here next week,” Jasmine, a local guide, told us just a few weeks before the bumpy, muddy road that once served as Ghost Village’s main street was due to be washed away by the rising tide.

“You are among the last people who will ever see Ghost Village,” she tells the group, which looks more saddened than privileged at the news.

A short time later we arrive at Hong Yan and are introduced to Mrs. Yung and her family – grandparents, parents, husband, children and grandchildren, all of whom now live in a new, two-storey, four-bedroom home built with money given to them by the government to replace their old, one room farm house in Ghost Village.

“Each family member was given (the equivalent of) $20,000 U.S. to rebuild. Because Mrs. Yung has a big family, she was able to build a big house where all her family can now live,” says Jasmine.

Mrs. Yung is one of the 1.3 million Chinese moved to make way for the new dam project, built to control the annual Yangtze River flooding, which causes massive property damage and results in many lives lost each year. She tells our group she likes her new home and village and especially her new way of life – no more back breaking rice paddy work for the handsome woman who now sells groceries out of the first-floor shop of her new home.

The Three Gorges dam cost $25 billion to build but as Jasmine points out, the last major Yangtze flood, in 1998, resulted in $24 billion in damages and 3,000 lives lost. In 1931, 145,000 people died in the Yangtze floods and in 1935 another 142,000 people perished.

Some of the old farm houses were moved to Hong Yan, preserved to show what village life along the river was like for the past 5,000 years.

Early the next morning, we arrive at the entrance of the Qutang Gorge, the shortest but most dramatic of the Three Gorges, which combined, are the largest fjords in the world.

The weathered rock formations hanging over our heads have taken the shape of animals over the centuries and our Chinese crew appears to have names for all of them.

As the Explorer sails behind a flotilla of vessels, big and small, we see the 175 metre signs painted into the cliffs which mark the final water level of the Yangtze. Behind the signs, we also see what will be lost – most tragically the high mountain caves that once served as the ancient burial tombs for the world renowned hanging coffins. Ancient writings scribbled centuries ago on rocks, and old tow roads, built to accommodate an army of men who were employed to manually pull vessels through shallow sections of the gorges using only ropes and strong backs, were also submerged just a few days after our visit.

The Shennong Stream excursion, which brought travellers deep into the shallowest parts of the Wu Gorge and up close to the hanging coffins, has been dramatically altered by the rising water and now is much shorter. The excursion is still made fascinating by the large caves, rock outcrops and the singing oarsmen directing our longboat. But the water level is so high now that the tow roads are mostly covered. So, the tow men are no longer needed – a way of life dating back centuries has been washed away by progress.

The final of the Three Gorges is Xiling, the longest and most dramatic, which ends at Yichang, a modern industrial city filled with Yangtze River refugees who have traded in their farming tools for the long bamboo poles of the coolie – their new job is to carry the heavy luggage of those who have just seen their former lives float away.