English: View of Three Gorges Dam from tourist vantage point overlooking the project site. Photo taken by Richard Chambers, AAA Yangtze Sampler tour, May, 2004, slightly modified to reduce effect of haze.

The original image is much hazier in the background and to bring out some of the details I used a combination of changes in gama to the background along with a touch of unsharp mask and a touch of increased saturation after selecting only the hazy area.

The haze actually underscores the problem that China is having with air pollution though part of the haze is undoubtedly water vapor from the river itself. China burns a lot of coal. During the cruise up the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) to Chongqing we passed many coal laden ships going downstream as well as passed several loading points where coal is loaded onto barges.

See photo of Three Gorges Dam locks which was taken from the other side of the tourist vantage point. The locks allow the passage of the large amounts of river shipping which would be blocked by the dam if the locks were not available.