Qutang Gorge

Qutang is the first and shortest of the Three Gorges: eight kilometres of water between Chijia Mountain on the north and Baiyan Mountain on the south, with peaks of 1,200 metres and a widest point of only 150 metres. Kuimen, the gate where the river enters, is a few tens of metres across at its narrowest and appears on the back of the ten-yuan note. The cliffs carry the marks of work: the Chalk Wall's thousand cut characters, the Meng Liang Stairway's zigzag of holes, and footpaths begun in the Western Han so that men on a tow rope could haul boats upstream.