NO Commanding Height on the Vast Wetland

On the Sanjiang Plain the green land stretches out to blend with the blue sky, making the ground a huge blanket. I could hardly find a higher point, for whenever I stood on a mass of tussocks, the surrounding area of a dozen square meters or so would sink with me. Scarcely had I got my camera set up and waited for the best light when the ground had sunk lower still. So I very often had to stand in waist-high or knee-high water to take pictures at level of the horizon.

In recent years, I have made a pilgrimage to the Sanjiang Plain Marshland every month.Once I fell into the marsh, and would have drowned if two local herdsmen had not happened to be passing, and pulled me out with a rope.

The Homeward-Bound Chum Salmon
Among all the fish species in the Sanjiang Plain Marshland, chum salmon are the most special. They migrate from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the Wusuli River in autumn. After their birth, they swim to the Pacific Ocean, staying within the area north of 350 north latitude in the Sea of Ochotsk. In the reproduction season, they return to the Maoniu Estuary of the Wusuli River of their birth. Every year around September 25 is the peak time of their return. Nothing can stop them from making their homeward trip, be it a riptide, dangerous shoal, waterfall or precipice.

The water of the Maoniu Estuary is crystal-clear, and the sandy bottom lies less than one meter below the surface. Thus it is an ideal place for chum salmon to spawn, which they do only once, and then die shortly after. So their bodies can be found all over me riverbed and become nourishment for the waterfowl s before their southbound flight. The fry also eat the dead fish, then float with the tide out into the Pacific Ocean.

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