John W. Morris
The dam at the Wujiangdu Power Station under
The dam at the Shimen Power Station during
construction during General Morris' trip to China in
General Morris' trip to China in 1980.
early 1980.
member. Li Rei wanted to go with the Corps people. Lloyd Duscha was with me. Bill Murden
went with another group.
The bureau group went up the Yangtze River to Three Gorges whereas our group traveled
south to the Pearl River. Ours proved to be a tough trip for about a week. We traveled in a
new Toyota van through mountain trails and narrow roads looking at dam sites. The
accommodations in 1980 were Spartan government houses. In some places, we slept on beds
with wooden or rope bottoms, no heat, and outside toilets. It was cold in February. Everything
was very clean. A Chinese girl came in the morning and brought us a pitcher of hot water.
Unless you hurried it was soon cold. The food was marginal but it was a military-type setup
and nothing that I had not encountered before as a soldier, but it was primitive by our
construction site standards.
At one site I visited a nearby troop unit which was doing some initial exploratory work on the
dam site.
I spent a lot of time with Mr. Li Rei. Somewhere along the line when we were alone he
brought up the subject of the Three Gorges Dam and what did I think of it. Since I had not
seen the site, I only noted that we had seen several other sites which with less money would
get power sooner. I had the feeling that he agreed.
Yichang, a major city on the Yangtze River, is the site of a dam called Gezhouba. The entire
American group assembled there. We were staying in a construction camp, again, which was
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