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Ever since the Three Gorges Dam project was officially launched by the Chinese government on the Yangtze River, millions of local residents in the surrounding areas have to be relocated to other places. These people are called the “Three Gorges
Immigrants.?Near the picturesque Wu Gorge—one of the three gorges concerned in the project—there is a Black Stone Village. Over a dozen households lived in the village, and they were scheduled to move before June 2002. While preparing to be
relocated, they searched for new opportunities for their future life.
The over-sixty-year-old Song Gonglin was the head of the Black Stone Village. In the resettlement, he was luckily assigned a piece of land in a favorable location. He planned to build an inn there and start his business.
Song’s neighbor, Hou Changqing and her family had been running an inn in the Black Stone Village for a long time. They also wished to get a land with an ideal location where they could continue their business. However, their dream didn’t come true.
While being competitors in the inn business, these two families lived together with harmony all along. The peace was finally broken, however, due to a dispute that Song Gonglin did not assign the well-located land to Hou Changqing’s family, and that
he also cut off their electricity soon after the resettlement. Eventually Hou Changqing and her son killed Song Gonglin and were put into jail. Hou’s husband left the Black Stone Village. In June 2003, the Three Gorges Reservoir started its water
storage. Following Song Gonglin’s wish, his sons built an inn in the new residential area for the upcoming tourist season. At the same time, more than half of the families from the Black Stone Village have started running their own inns. |
