Zhang Chenghua (1st L) takes care of a senior lady at an elder's home he runs in Wanzhou District, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Sept. 12, 2011.
Zhang Chenghua was busy preparing a festival party for his "parents" on Sept. 12, 2011.
"I wish all my parents have a happy Mid-Autumn Day today," Zhang said.
The people Zhang talked about are the 93 seniors living at an elders' home Zhang and his wife run in Chongqing's Wangzhou District, a place where tens of thousands of residents in the Three Gorges area have resettled after their homes were submerged to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.
Zhang Chenghua was one of the first Three Gorges residents who chose to resettle voluntarily. Life had told him that problems will be solved by "courage and determination".
Zhang became laid off in 1986 during the first wave of widespread labor redundancies in China. By the sweat of his own face, Zhang set up an ironware workshop in Wanzhou and turned it into a middle-sized factory with a registered capital of 500,000 yuan.
"It is the people that make a difference," Zhang said.
In 2002, Zhang and his wife came to the place where they opened the Wangzhu Elders' Home three years after.
Now the Wangzhu Elders' Home has grown to house 93 seniors with a licensed care-giving crew of 27. Many residents in Chongqing are planning to send their parents to the care of Zhang Chenghua due to the good service Zhang and his crew provide and their love for the elderly.
For ages, the Chinese suffered from the flood-prone Yangtze. For ages, the Chinese strived to tame the unforgiving waters.
A water control project at the Three Gorges area was envisaged as early as 1918 by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, forerunner of China's democratic revolution in the early 20th century, but was shelved due to technical obstacles and social turbulence until Communist leader Mao Zedong proposed a dam and reservoir at the Three Gorges area in the 1950s.
It was hoped, in a poem penned by Chairman Mao in 1956, that "walls of stone will stand upstream to the west", from which "a smooth lake" would arise in "the narrow gorges".
Since then, China had kicked off preparation for harnessing the Yangtze and constructing the Three Gorges project.
A great amount of work in investigations, feasibility studies, tests and examinations, had been done with the participation of thousands of experts from China and abroad. A small dam was even built in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River as a trial-and-error project.
After protracted debates and researches for around half a century, the plan to build a dam for flood control and power generation was approved in 1992 and the construction of the Three Gorges project, whose main components include the dam, a five-tier ship lock, and 26 hydropower turbo-generators, began one year after.
Completed in 2006, the Three Gorges Dam run at full capacity in 2008 for the first time as water levels at the 185-meter-deep dam reached 175 meters.
In a statement issued in May 2011, the State Council, or China's cabinet, admitted that the Three Gorges project had caused some problems ranging from resident relocation to geological hazards while bringing "great and comprehensive benefits".
But life still carries on. People, millions of them, are making their little but valuable contribution towards the success of the world's largest water control and hydroelectric project. (Xinhua/Chen Cheng)(ljh)
