First Rafters Down Yangtze Arrive at Shanghai

PEKING —  A 10-member Chinese rafting team Wednesday became the first to navigate the length of the Yangtze River, China’s longest waterway, the New China News Agency reported.

The agency said the team reached the mouth of the Yangtze near Shanghai in three unpowered boats after a harrowing, 3,730-mile, five-month journey in which four members died.

Expedition leader Wang Maojun, 32, said the adventurers faced hardships ranging from freezing temperatures in the Tibet plateau headwaters to near-starvation.

At one point along the route, the expedition ran out of food and had to eat “grass roots and dead animals,” the news agency quoted Wang as saying.

Praises Villagers

Wang attributed the expedition’s success to the support of villagers along the river.

“Without their support, we would have hardly been able to move an inch on the river,” he said. “Therefore, our victory belongs to the people and the motherland.”

The New China News Agency said the three boats and their crews were greeted at the river mouth by sailors on four naval vessels, a group of schoolchildren and the sound of drums, gongs and fireworks.

Members of an aborted U.S.-China expedition said in September that the all-Chinese team had skipped dangerous sections of the river.

The American leader of the failed expedition, Ken Warren of Portland, Ore., said the Chinese team was poorly equipped and “haven’t even remotely come close” to navigating the turbulent upper reaches of the river.

The Sino-American team gave up its attempt in mid-September after covering about 1,100 miles. One member of the U.S.-China team, photographer David Shippee, died, apparently of pneumonia.

The U.S.-China expedition was sponsored by a Chinese group, China Sports Services Co., and by several American organizations, including the National Geographic Society. The aim was to travel down the Yangtze from its source in Qinghai province to Yibin, about 1,900 miles downstream in Sichuan province. That section of the river runs through deep mountain gorges and contains fierce rapids.

The Chinese team set out 20 days earlier than the U.S-China expedition. In September, shortly after the U.S.-China team gave up, the New China News Agency reported that two Chinese rafters had navigated Tiger Leap Gorge, the first to make it through the 1.5-mile Yangtze gorge in an unpowered boat.