The Yangtze River cleaved a path and made its way through the mountains to have formed these uniquely beautiful, magnificent, and wonderful gorge - the Three Gorges: Qutang Gorge, Wu Gorge, and Xiling Gorge. The Three Yangtze Gorges stretch from Baidicheng in Fengjie County, Chongqing Municipality eastward for 192 kilometers to Nanjinguan in Yichang City, Hubei Province.

The westernmost of these, the Qutang Gorge, extends for about 8 kilometers between Baidicheng and Daxi township. Though the shortest, it is the most spectacular of the three. With vertical cliffs of some thousand meters high as its two flanks, the Qutang Gorge is only a few dozens of meters wide just like a narrow gateway. With swash and rumble, the surging Yangtze River pours into the gateway with great momentum.

The middle gorge - the Wuxia Gorge - is 45 kilometers in length from the Daning River in the west to Guangdukou in the east. This is the longest and most complete of the three, and is often called the "Great Gorge." It is renowned for its remote and peaceful landscape beauty and for its changing clouds and rain. The 12 peaks of the Wushan Mountains that flank the Yangtze stand like a continuous screen - a landscape to stir the spirit.

Strictly speaking, the easternmost Xiling Gorge consists of two sections: the westerly one stretches 15 kilometers from the Bingshubaojian (Military Books and Precious Sword) Gorge at Xiangxi (Fragrant Steam), via the Niuganmafei (Ox Liver and Horse Lungs) Gorge, and ends in the Kongling Gorge at the Miaohe River; the easterly one extends 20 kilometers from the Dengying (Lantern Shadow) Gorge at Nantuo to the Huangmao (Yellow Cat) Gorge at Nanjinguan. The whole Gorge area is covered with high mountains, gullies, dangerous shoals and hidden reefs of various sizes.

The Three Gorges came about as the result of China's physical geography. Thousands of streams and rivers on the Sichuan Basin seek to empty into the ocean in the east, but between the second and third steps of China's geological staircase they are impeded by the Qiyao and the Xuefeng mountains cannot resist the tender toughness of the river - ultimately the Yangtze fights its way through, out to the ocean and the world beyond.

The Three Yangtze Gorges have showed the magic workings of nature with their marvelous and beautiful mountains and waters. The grotesque peaks and rocks on the two sides of the Three Gorges are accounting the great changes taking place in the region in the past billion years, and the variegated wracks of lives sleeping deep between the rock layers are narrating the history of the evolvement of lives during the past hundreds of millions of years.