In 1994, workers broke ground on China’s Three Gorges Dam. By its completion in 2012, the dam had transformed the ecology of the Yangzi River, displaced over a million people, and forever altered a landscape immortalized in centuries of literature and art. The controversial history of the dam is well known; what this book uncovers are its unexpected connections to the cultural traditions it seems to sever. By reconsidering the dam in relation to the aesthetic history of the Three Gorges region over more than two millennia, Fixing Landscape offers radically new ways of thinking about cultural and spatial production in contemporary China. Corey Byrnes argues that this monumental feat of engineering can only be understood by confronting its status as a techno-poetic act, a form of landscaping indebted to both the technical knowledge of engineers and to the poetic legacies of the Gorges as cultural site. Synthesizing methods drawn from premodern, modern, and contemporary Chinese studies, as well as from critical geography, art history, and the environmental humanities, Byrnes offers innovative readings of eighth-century poetry, paintings from the twelfth through twenty-first centuries, contemporary film, nineteenth-century British travelogues, and Chinese and Western maps, among other sources. Fixing Landscape shows that premodern poetry and visual art have something urgent to tell us about a contemporary experiment in spatial production. Poems and paintings may not build dams, but Byrnes argues that the Three Gorges Dam would not exist as we know it without them.

What were the challenges of building the Three Gorges Dam? What are the pros and cons of this immense structure? Find out in this fascinating book.

In the ongoing courageous struggle of a relatively small group of Chinese to prevent the completion of the Three Gorges Dam in China, Dai Qing is the outspoken leader whose eloquent voice is always heard despite threats and intimidation by the Chinese authorities to silence it. Dai Qing, an investigative journalist and author with a wide audience in China and abroad, compiled this book of essays and field reports assessing the impact of the Three Gorges megadam now under construction at Sandouping in China's Hubei province at great risk to her own freedom. This book is an effort to prevent history from repeating itself ten-fold (a reference to the great floods in 1975 during which over 60 dams collapsed and at least 100,000 people lost their lives) if the 39 billion cubic metres of water in the Three Gorges reservoir ever escapes by natural or man-made catastrophes. These comprehensive essays reveal the deep rooted problems presented by the Three Gorges project that the government is attempting to disguise or suppress. The main concerns are population resettlement and human rights, the irreversible environmental and economic impact, the loss of cultural antiquities and historical sites, military considerations, and hidden dam disasters from the past. Opponents of the dam are attempting to kill the project or at least reduce the size of the megadam now planned to be the biggest, most expensive and, incidentally, the most hazardous of all hydro-electric projects on this planet.

"The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi River in China is a massive project entwined in controversy. When finally completed in 2009, it will stand as the world's largest generator of hydroelectric power, with a yearly output equal to that of fifty million tons of coal or fifteen nuclear power plants. However, the dam's 375-mile reservoir has already displaced over one million people and submerged over one thousand towns and villages. This publication examines the work that four leading contemporary Chinese artists - Chen Qiulin, Yun-Fei Ji, Liu Xiaodong, and Zhuang Hui - have created in response to the dam. Despite differences in backgrounds and artistic practices, these artists have engaged with the theme of displacement, responding to the movement of people, the demolition of old towns and construction of new cities, and the astonishing changes the project is bringing to the local landscape. Their powerful works represent four major branches of contemporary Chinese art: ink painting, realist oil painting, conceptual photography, and performance and new media art." "Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art continues a series of Smart Museum catalogues produced in conjunction with Wu Hung's groundbreaking exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art. Through extensive illustrations, interviews, and a substantial essay by Wu Hung, the publication documents the exhibiting artists' work, backgrounds, and concerns. Other essays extend consideration to representations of the Three Gorges Dam in film and in contemporary art in the West. Moving beyond any single medium or trend, Displacement offers nuanced, thought-provoking perspectives on a project of great social, environmental, and global concern."--BOOK JACKET.

Recently, the Chinese government has decided, with a minimum of fanfare, to press ahead with one of the largest hydroelectric project ever built - a dam across the Yangtze river at the Three Gorges. The dam aims to generate 17,500 MW of electricity, will displace over 1 million people, and will create a lake over 450 miles long.

In the ongoing courageous struggle of a relatively small group of Chinese to prevent the completion of the Three Gorges Dam in China, Dai Qing is the outspoken leader whose eloquent voice is always heard despite threats and intimidation by the Chinese authorities to silence it. Dai Qing, an investigative journalist and author with a wide audience in China and abroad, compiled this book of essays and field reports assessing the impact of the Three Gorges megadam now under construction at Sandouping in China's Hubei province at great risk to her own freedom. This book is an effort to prevent history from repeating itself ten-fold (a reference to the great floods in 1975 during which over 60 dams collapsed and at least 100,000 people lost their lives) if the 39 billion cubic metres of water in the Three Gorges reservoir ever escapes by natural or man-made catastrophes. These comprehensive essays reveal the deep rooted problems presented by the Three Gorges project that the government is attempting to disguise or suppress. The main concerns are population resettlement and human rights, the irreversible environmental and economic impact, the loss of cultural antiquities and historical sites, military considerations, and hidden dam disasters from the past. Opponents of the dam are attempting to kill the project or at least reduce the size of the megadam now planned to be the biggest, most expensive and, incidentally, the most hazardous of all hydro-electric projects on this planet.