Discover Chongqing
Baiheliang Underwater Museum (White Crane Ridge)
白鹤梁水下博物馆
A 1,600-metre stone ridge in the Yangtze carrying 1,200 years of carved low-water marks - the world's oldest hydrological record - now sealed under a pressurised chamber 40 metres below the reservoir surface. You descend by escalator and view the inscriptions through portholes.
The story
What makes this place special
White Crane Ridge is a 1.6 km sandstone ledge in the Yangtze at Fuling, which surfaced only in the low water of winter and early spring. From the year 763 onwards people carved on it when it appeared: 163 inscriptions and images in all, of which 114 record water levels, giving a roughly 1,200-year run of hydrological observation — the longest such record anywhere. The marks are fish, whose eyes were cut at the level of the lowest water; the best-known is a 2.8-metre carp, and a Tang-dynasty fish re-carved in 1685 has its eyes at almost exactly the zero point of the modern gauge. The ridge was unknown outside China until Chinese specialists presented it at a hydrology conference in Britain in the 1970s. The Three Gorges reservoir put it more than 30 metres under water, and the museum built to keep it visible opened on 18 May 2009.
What you’ll discover
You enter a normal-looking museum building on the riverbank, then descend a very long inclined lift — reported at around 90 metres of travel — to about 40 metres below the river surface, and walk a corridor of something over a hundred metres to a curved viewing gallery. There you look through a row of 23 thick circular windows, about 80 cm across, at the carved ridge lit underwater on the other side of the glass. The engineering is as interesting as the carvings: the ridge is sealed under a metal shell filled with filtered river water, so the pressure inside and outside is balanced and silt cannot scour the stone. Divers clean the carvings periodically.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- This is the single most unusual museum in the Chongqing region and almost no foreign visitor goes. It is in Fuling, not the city — plan it as a half-day by high-speed rail or as a stop off a Yangtze cruise.
- Spend time in the surface galleries first. The inscriptions behind glass are hard to read without knowing what a fish-eye water mark is for, and the upper museum explains it.
- The windows are small and the gallery is narrow, so if a tour group is in it, wait ten minutes rather than shuffling behind them.
- Visibility through the glass varies with how recently the carvings were cleaned and how silty the water is. It can be disappointing — that is the nature of the place, not bad luck.
- Some of the carvings removed from the ridge are displayed in the Three Gorges Museum in the city centre, which is a good substitute if you cannot get to Fuling.
When to come
Any time, since the whole thing is indoors and underwater; weekday mornings for an empty viewing gallery. Closed Mondays, so check before travelling out.
Getting around
Surprisingly good: the descent is by lift and the underwater corridor and viewing gallery are level. The gallery is narrow and the windows are at a fixed height, which is awkward from a seated position, and there is a security check and some walking inside the surface building. Someone with a bad knee will have no trouble. A wheelchair user should be able to reach the gallery but may find the window height a real limitation.
Worth knowing before you go
This is genuinely unusual and almost entirely missed by foreign visitors. The descent tunnel is long and the viewing chamber is cold and damp; bring a layer even in summer.
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