With the building of the Yangtze Three Gorges Dam, a long stretch of the great river will become a lake, and there will be many new places for tourists to go to. Sadly, as the water level of the reservoir rises behind the dam, the Shennong Stream, the best river-rafting water in China, will disappear.
This area was where the legendary Shennong (Emperor Yan the Divine Farmer and originator of Chinese herbal medicine) climbed through clouds and scaled cliffs, scouring the mountains, collecting and testing plants for their medicinal properties. For thousands of years, people have gathered valuable medicinal herbs in the Shennongjia forests unfrequented by man, and then have rafted them downriver "back to civilization."