[Rick Lee]

Rick, the environmental situation in China makes any other look negligible by comparison. It's BAD and the fact that they have a state-controlled media that rarely ever reports bad news doesn't help. The Three Gorges Dam will change China forever and they poured the last concrete section of it while I was in Chongqing. I went to the museum on the dam and came away with probably the opposite impression the government had intended. The museum was stuffed with absolutely priceless, ancient artifacts taken from areas soon to be flooded when the dam goes fully online. Some of this stuff - jewely, pottery, mummies, carvings, tools, robes, weapons, etc. - were well over 2000 yrs. old. One can't help but think it was all hastily excavated to show the gov't. cares about history. But then with that much stuff dug up in only the last 12 yrs., they can't be scratching more than the tip of the iceberg of the treasures out there. Soon it will all be under 100m of water, gone forever. And this says nothing of the 1.5 million people who've been displaced by the dam project. They say it can withstand a nuclear strike, but I don't think anyone believes it. I'm sure it's on Taiwan's hit list if the Mainland comes after them. How'd you like to live downstream from that? And it's in an earthquake zone.