Three Gorges Dam receives first trans-provincial tour group this year

Three Gorges Dam received a tour group from Anhui province on July 21, its first visitors from outside Hubei since the province was reopened to tourists on July 17.

The 32-member group consists of employees and their family members, all from a company located in Anhui Province. The youngest tourist is only 6-year-old. They came all the way to see the Three Gorges Dam.

Mr. Zhang, one of the tourists in the group, said that the region is fortunate to have the dam to retain and regulate flooding.

“The recent torrential rainfalls across the Yangtze River have had a serious impact on the middle and lower reaches of the river in terms of flood control, and Anhui province is no exception,” he said.

“A few days ago, I saw on the news that this year’s second major flood had formed upstream and passed smoothly through the Three Gorges Dam. Without the dam, there could have been huge disasters.”

Statistics show that since the reopening of the Three Gorges Dam tourist area, the dam has received a total of 53,500 visitors, 17,000 of which were from Hubei tour groups.

Following the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s announcement regarding the resumption of inter-provincial travel, the dam’s tourist area saw a 30 percent increase of tourists over the same period last month.