As part of their cruise up the Yangtze River, students got on some smaller boats to get a closer look at some of the gorges along the waterway’s tributaries. (Photo credit: Curtis Chan)

By Matthew Spencer

Well let’s see, today started out with an early morning, at least it felt early for me. But it was so worth it.

After breakfast on the cruise ship we got onto another boat. On this boat we went from our port into what I’m pretty sure was another part of the Yangzhou River.

After a very scenic boat ride we stopped at this platform in the middle of the river. Here we got on small wooden boats, they were very small and felt very fragile. We took these boats farther up the river. There were amazing cliffs all around our trip.

Also built into some of these cliffs were coffin caves. This is where people long ago would put people after they died. To this day it is unknown how they got the coffins up the cliff and into the cave. After that we went back to the ship and we ate lunch. After that we relaxed for the rest of the day and then ate dinner.