In the decade since, almost 720,000 people have been uprooted as farms, ancient cities and cultural sites are inundated for the country's most ambitious engineering project since the Great Wall. But in the Yilin district of Yichang, where many residents live within a 2km radius of the dam, there is little sentimentality about the historical and cultural loss, and even less display of anger or bitterness about being forced to relocate from their by-now submerged villages.

""The country has to progress, so we support the project,'' said farmer Xu Tianzhen, who had to move out of her farm in 2000 with her family to Yilin. Ms Wang Guizhen, a grocery store owner who saw her business rise and fall in tandem with the arrival and departure of various construction teams at the dam in the 1990s, added: ""Most people here don't say much about the dam because their feelings are too complex to be expressed in a few words. We are proud that the country is making progress but so many people have lost their homes, farms and jobs because of the dam. Most of us just hope the new shipping facilities at the dam will bring more business and investments here.''

Ordinary Chinese have been keeping their fingers crossed since June 1, when China shut 19 of the 22 sluice gates at the dam, creating a 1,084 sq km reservoir on the Yangtze River. On Tuesday, the 203.9 billion yuan (S$43 billion) project reached another major milestone when the reservoir filled to the 135m mark - the necessary depth for conducting trials on the dam's powerful generators and permanent ship lock that would eventually allow commercial vessels to sail upstream to Chongqing in central China.

Chinese engineers began testing two power-generating units this week, which are expected to be fully operational in August, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Two more units are slated to be operational in October, and by year-end, the power station would be able to supply 5.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. When completed in 2009, the dam's 26 power-generating units are supposed to provide clean energy for a large part of the country, cut shipping costs by about a third, and create new tourism and investment opportunities.

But the 185m-high dam, which stretches 2km across the Yangtze, is also a huge gamble on all fronts. Critics have pointed out that the electricity generated by the dam would be too expensive, and that China was better off building several smaller dams. The dam could also trap pollution from thousands of factories and villages, which dump large amounts of industrial waste and sewage into the Yangtze yearly, turning the reservoir into a cesspool.

China is not unaware of the problems, committing 39.3 billion yuan to pollution control and ecological protection, and plans to build more than 200 sewage and waste treatment plants at the Three Gorges reservoir and the upper reaches of the Yangtze River by 2010, state media said. But some problems have already surfaced, with officials admitting on Thursday that they have found 80 cracks on the dam's surface that could cause leaks if not fixed, and that there is not enough fertile farmland for those relocated.

The full extent of the dam's impact will not be known for years, but many people who live in cities along the Yangtze River have already experienced huge changes to their lives. Mr Tang Liming, a taxi-driver in Chongqing's Wushan county, said that before the flooding of the reservoir, he could charge 20 yuan for each trip from the harbour to the city. Now, he gets only 10 yuan because the distance has been shortened after the water reached the 135m mark. - Published in The Straits Times on 14 June 2003. [PART 2]