The flow of life amid a dam's rise Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• First a pandemic, then the floods: Villagers in southern China face devastation again
• TotalEnergies Said Among Suitors for AES Brazil Power Unit (
• ‘Man cannot win against nature’: Amid catastrophic floods, China’s dams come into question
• Where to Find Great Chinese Food in Austin
• The Klamath River’s dams are being removed. Inside the effort to restore a scarred watershed
• Where to Find the Best Versions of Classic Chinese Dishes in Austin

China’s dams — its primary guard against floods — are coming into question as they face increasing strain. On the same day, more than 16,000 people were trapped in Guzhen town in the same province as the waters surged 10 feet high and broke through levees. WHILE working on the “Three Gorges Project,” Liu took many photographs in the region to use as references for paintings made later in his Beijing studio. Last fall, as he wound up the series, he took a different approach, painting a monumental work on location at the riverside town of Fengji. He spent three weeks working with a group of male laborers hired as models on the roof of an apartment building, at the level to which the reservoir is expected to rise. It’s intended to provide tremendous benefits in terms of power and flood control, but at an enormous cost.

First a pandemic, then the floods: Villagers in southern China face devastation again

He has taken a high vantage point on the left side of the four-panel work, looking down on the dam, which connects a town on the near side of the river with distant hills. Building dams and binding rivers with concrete are methods China learned from the West. But many ecologists there have also begun advocating for fewer dams and giving space back to nature.

TotalEnergies Said Among Suitors for AES Brazil Power Unit (

Make sure to order the cumin lamb, Sichuan dry stir-fried chicken, the homemade pork wontons in spicy soup, and arguably the best eggplant side dish in town. The space is pretty humble and lo-fi, but if you dine-in, then you can get the large format cast iron hot pot dishes that will more than feed two people. Find it near 183 and Ohlen, in the same shopping center as Din Ho, Julie’s Noodles, and Ramen Tatsu-Ya. AES Brasil Energia SA has a market value of 5.6 billion reais ($1.1 billion), but the holding company is asking about 7 billion reais for the assets, said the people, asking not to be identified because negotiations are private. The two-bed, two-bath home sits on a quarter-acre lot, and Putman boasted the gardens and terraces as a draw for potential buyers.

‘Man cannot win against nature’: Amid catastrophic floods, China’s dams come into question

He spent the next 20 years urging Chinese officials to adopt an eco-centric approach to urbanization. That day, rushing over riverbanks to swallow sidewalks and streets. As a small family firm, the shop had struggled to survive the first half of the year, when coronavirus lockdowns cut into business. Its warehouses were full, with business restarting only a month or so ago as the outbreak waned. In Shexian, a county that suffered its worst flooding in decades this month when an upstream dam overflowed in the middle of the night, residents said they had been given no warning. The heavy storms over the Yangtze River basin are the result of a western Pacific subtropical high, a pressure system that every summer carries warm air from south to north.

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Ma calculated more than $143,000 in damage to his machines and pickup trucks. The factories, which were paying him a few thousand dollars each to clean up, had lost much more. Their workers swept out brownish-yellow water from the floors; the smell of rot lingered in the air.

The Klamath River’s dams are being removed. Inside the effort to restore a scarred watershed

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Nearby, a tiny human residence is stuffed into underpinnings of the bridge. Dams built to withstand floods that happen “once every thousand years” are now facing extreme water levels within 100, or 50 or 10 years of their construction, Yu said. It is not a question of whether but when each one ends — and who potentially pays the price. The choice of where to let waters out and whom to flood highlights inequalities. China tends to prioritize protection of cities — “more populous and economically important regions,” Ma said — at the cost of villagers, mostly farmers or migrant workers. Those who get flooded should not be living so close to the rivers, but many of them “don’t have a choice,” he added.

Where to Find the Best Versions of Classic Chinese Dishes in Austin

Qiao spoke as many rural residents of the Yangtze River floodplains do, accustomed to swelling waters whenever big rains hit. But this year is the worst in decades, with 433 rivers surging above flood control levels since June, 33 of them setting records. In Bangkok, he recently hired 11 young prostitutes as models for a series of paintings, created and shown at the Tang Gallery. The subjects are clothed and relatively relaxed, but they look bored and unhappy.

Much of the worst damage in this year’s floods, said Ma, has come from broken dams or dikes, or from intentional release of reservoir waters without sufficient warning or protection of people downstream. The floods have so far affected more than 54 million people, including 3.7 million displaced and 158 people dead or missing. The surging waters have destroyed 41,000 houses and damaged 368,000 more, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management. Death tolls and battered homes are fewer than in previous years, but displacement and economic loss are far higher. The Soviets also designed China’s Banqiao Dam in Henan province, which was heralded as an “iron dam” able to withstand a once-in-2,000-years flood.

The way to do that, Yu said, is by restoring riverbanks, wetlands and lakes, complete with their living “sponges” of soil and vegetation that can absorb and keep water locally. We could never have imagined it,” said Shao, 49, the co-owner of a home appliance shop in Shexian who did not give his full name. His relatives and store employees sat on its front steps, rinsing kitchen and bathroom appliance parts that they hoped to still sell. Those chased from their homes also speak of mismanaged flood systems, lack of government accountability and unequal treatment of the rural poor, who bear most of the flood burden. China has more than 98,000 dams, according to the Ministry of Water Resources, more than any other nation. Many were built in the 1950s and ’60s and suffer from poor maintenance.

He was one of tens of thousands of villagers whose homes and fields were about to be engulfed as a dam gushed open to release rising waters. Gambino said the Glassell Park area where the home is located is popular among artists, musicians and actors. Many people who fit the bill have come to see the house, but it has also attracted a wider range of potential buyers like a chef who would use it entertain, and other business people who are interested in the home as a piece of art. “Liu Xiaodong paints the psychic landscape of the new China,” said curator and critic Jeff Kelley, who organized the show. It’s composed of four paintings from the artist’s ambitious “Three Gorges Project” and a 30-foot scroll that tracks Liu’s life through his art. Liu has painted the Yangtze River as a vast expanse of grungy water pressing the land into triangular wedges while a great gray hulk of a dam, still under construction, creates a gigantic reservoir.

“It’s the antithesis of Chinese Propaganda painting,” he said. Liu views the dam as “a typically grand-scale Chinese project without human feeling.” But his monumental work has “many complicated meanings,” he said. “Chinese society is very complicated,” he said at the museum, speaking mostly through his wife and interpreter, Yu Hong, also a highly accomplished figurative painter. They live in Beijing, where both artists teach painting and drawing at the Central Academy of Fine Art, China’s leading art school.