A 10,000-tonne-class sea-going vessel, named "Innovation 5", arrived in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on Wednesday, becoming the first ship of its size to sail into the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
During its voyage, the vessel passed through the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project, in the upper stream of the Yangtze.
Difficult as it is for 10,000-tonne-class ships to pass through the dam, the Innovation 5 sailed through the 113-meter five-tier ship locks in four hours.
The vessel, carrying over 5,000 tonnes of food, departed from Ningbo-Zhoushan Port in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang on April 24.
It traveled via the Chongqing-Zhoushan river-sea direct route, which links the municipality in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River directly with the sea.
Normally, transportation between harbors in Chongqing and Ningbo-Zhoushan Port takes about 35 days. Thanks to the Chongqing-Zhoushan river-sea direct route, it has been shortened by about 20 days.
The Three Gorges project is a multi-functional water-control system, consisting of a 2,309-meter-long and 185-meter-high dam, five-tier ship locks on the north and south sides, and 34 turbo-generators with a combined power generating capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts.
First-ever 10,000-tonne-class ship sails through Three Gorges Dam
The Hoh Xil National Nature Reserve in northwest China's Qinghai Province has been attracting tourists from across the country recently as Tibetan antelopes have started their annual mass migration in the high-altitude World Natural Heritage Site and local ecological systems continue to improve.
Hoh Xil means "beautiful young lady" in Mongolian. Covering 45,000 square kilometers, the average altitude of the plateau is above 4,600 meters. The place is home to dozens of wild animals like Tibetan antelopes and wild yaks apart from many wild plants found only on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the highest plateau in the world.
As Hoh Xil's ecological environment continues to improve, more and more tourists have come to visit the remote place tucked away high on the plateau.
"We drove all the way from Zhejiang to Hoh Xil. I saw lots of wild animals like Tibetan antelopes, wild kiangs and other wildlife. On our way here, I saw many workers of the national nature reserve who were performing their duty of conserving the environment and natural ecology of Hoh Xil, so the ecological environment here in Hoh Xil is really getting better and better," said Xue Yu, a tourist from east China's coastal province Zhejiang.
In 2017, Hoh Xil was added to the World Natural Heritage List, making it the 51th World Heritage Site in China.
Tibetan antelope migration, improved ecological environment draw tourists to Hoh Xil
