Glimpses from the Underwater Museum at the Three Gorges Dam

On May 18, 2009, officials marked the completion of China’s first underwater museum, built in the Three Gorges Dam area in Chongqing, China.

The Three Gorge Dam

Here are some of the photos taken from the article:

The museum is called Baiheliang Underwater Museum. Baiheliang means, in Chinese, “White Crane Ridge,” which is the name of a stone ridge on the banks of the Yangzi River that had been carved with inscriptions from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) and afterwards. This ridge was unfortunately left behind to be covered by water when the Three Gorges were flooded. The museum is thus named to honor all the cultural heritage that the construction of the Dam destroyed. The article says this: “Baiheliang Underwater Museum was unveiled on May 18, 2009 after years of construction. Baiheliang, also called White Crane Ridge, is a natural stone ridge located in the Yangtze River in the north of Fuling. The ridge, 1,600 meters long and 10 to 15 meters wide, has 165 pieces of inscriptions left by poets and writers dating back to Tang Dynasty. These inscriptions consist of more than 30,000 characters, reflect the situation of water level in 72 years out of the past 1,200 years. After these precious cultural heritages were submerged because of the construction of Three Gorges Dam, the country invested a huge amount of money into the construction of the museum to protect them.”

The Yangzi River showing the location of the Three Gorges Dam

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