The Three Gorges Project is a monumental water conservancy initiative constructed in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Designed to achieve a maximum reservoir level of 175 meters, the project resulted in significant flooding across Chongqing and Hubei provinces along the Yangtze River. Consequently, this led to the monumental resettlement of over a million people, known as the Three Gorges Migrants.
The relocation process began in February 1993 with the construction of the Maoping Creek flood discharge protection project, the largest preliminary project of the Three Gorges Project. Villages such as Sanxi, Maoping, and Zhongbao on the right bank of the dam in Zigui County became the first to see their residents relocated. This marked the beginning of a mass migration that would see more than one million people uprooted from their homes.
By early 2010, the resettlement of all one million migrants had been completed. Most of the displaced individuals relocated within the same geographical area, often moving their homes and communities upward to higher ground. However, approximately 166,000 migrants left their homeland entirely, resettling in major provinces and cities such as Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, and Shandong.
The emotional toll of leaving one’s home is profound. The bittersweet mixture of emotions – pain, longing, and hope – experienced by the Three Gorges Migrants is difficult for those outside the situation to fully comprehend. For these individuals, home is a place they can remember but can no longer physically return to. They dispersed from their ancestral lands to various regions, starting anew in environments that were often vastly different from their own, complete with language barriers and unfamiliar customs.
Today, many of the Three Gorges Migrants have successfully integrated into their new communities, establishing lives in their adopted regions. Yet, there are still many who, after spending time in their new homes, have chosen to return to their roots. Unfortunately, they often find their original homes submerged beneath the waters of the reservoir. As a result, they are left to rent nearby accommodations and seek work, becoming local residents in a place they once called home. This experience cannot be adequately described by the word “resignation”; it is a complex narrative of survival and resilience.