'The damming of the Yangtze river has already commenced, and, slowly but surely, this amazing landscape will be lost forever. You can enjoy a memorable cruise on this river before it changes irreversibly." Thus, the Saga brochure announced its Yangtze trip on the Victoria Pearl for the over-50s.
"Do the kids know where we left the will?" Angst always strikes me at 39,000ft. To calm my rampant fear, I finally got down to reading the Saga itinerary. "Unfortunately standards of public convenience in China are not as high in as in most western countries." And there was another ominous warning. "Water used for drinking, brushing teeth or making ice should be sterilised or boiled before use." It seemed that the two most important ends of the body could turn your holiday into a nightmare.
I swallowed my aspirin and did the first of my two-minute walks around the aircraft, clocking my dozing Saga companions. "They're all rehearsing for death," I said returning.
"Just relax and enjoy." Erica has this most infuriating habit of looking on the bright side.
I fired another salvo. "How many coffins do you reckon the ship carries in its hold?" I resisted the temptation to look for myself when, on the quay at Chongqing, I first set eyes on the Victoria Pearl, our mother for the next eight days, squatting benignly on the Yangtze.
"Offering the best in comfort and facilities, ensuring your journey is relaxed and enjoyable." She had everything. T'ai chi, Jacuzzi, acupressure, calligraphy expert, kite maker, massage. A waiting, beaming crew. But how to get on board?
She was several hundred yards away, across the muddy shore, and there were several narrow planks to negotiate. It did not quite compare with the gangway of QE2. In abject terror, I held my breath and my wife. The other Senior Saga Somnambulists, a chain gang of 49 souls, were wobbling across the planks; jolly and joking. What it is about the British? Why are they so incredibly stoic? Talk about gallows humour. Dunkirk came to mind.
Once onboard, all the survivors relaxed, chatted. Feeling a sense of achievement. We nibbled, drank and started to coalesce. And there was that wonderful complex smell of Chinese food wafting up from the kitchens. Ah! The food! The food! It was continuously spectacular, even better than my local in north London.
We were moving. We were off up the Yangtze, the Chang Jiang, heading for the fabled Three Gorges, meandering the heartland of China.
Dapper, bearded Mike from Nottingham informed us that the river was 6,300km long, from the Tibetan plateau to the East China Sea.
Later, when I entered the Dynasty Lounge, the truth dawned. An ominous gong reverberated in my bones. All my travelling companions were over the hill. Up until now, I had kidded myself that I had been slowly negotiating the early foothills of middle age. "Erica! How did I get to be 73?" I went upstairs, resigned to my fate and joined the other inmates on deck. Renee from Harrow on the Hill bee-lined for us. She was well into the hinterland of 70 years. She was urbane, elegant and sophisticated; and still quite sexy. There was still hope for us all. She had been everywhere.
"My husband died 10 years ago. I must have travelled 30 countries since then." What energy. What expense.
Renee was not unique. This travelling seemed to be an occupation, the method of survival for many of the unattached people on board. Joan was another widow. She was once a mathematician, but now she was an inveterate traveller. Ever since she lost her husband at an impossibly early age, she hadn't been able to settle at home. "I've been away four times already this year. It's become a sort of obsession."
I looked out of the window. The misty landscape slowly passed like an intangible dream. The Victoria Pearl was a bit like life. You hardly knew you were moving but suddenly you found yourself at a new destination. Was I the only one wondering if the old man with his scythe would hobble up the gangplank come next stop?
The Three Gorges. The gentle lush green mountains like so many soft sweet breasts loomed up in the mist, undulating into the far distance, at once therapeutic, making me feel more serene than I had ever felt since hitting three score and 10.
"Look!" Mr Romford Essex waxed elegiac for Mrs Romford Essex. "Look! Just like a Chinese painting."
Indeed. Painters had been trying to recapture this magic for over 1,000 years.
Dapper Michael with the incurable energy and enthusiasm of a schoolboy didn't actually have time to admire the scene. He was running from one end of the ship to another, dashing up and down the decks, clicking away with his camera like the end of the world. Before the end of the journey he would use up 36 reels of film.
Michael had had done his homework; seemed to know more about China and the Chinese than anyone else on board. "Thirteen cities will disappear with the flooding, 140 towns, 1,352 villages. All this will disappear when the great dam is completed in 2009." He went on clicking.
Going ashore, we all were excited as schoolkids as we zoomed upward by cable car to the top of Zhongshan Lu and looked back down at the Yangtze. She had been free and unfettered for 5,000 years. She had witnessed everything, all the years of Chinese history from the Xia dynasty 2,000 years before Christ to the long march of Mao, and the terrible Cultural Revolution. And now the greatest revolution was about to unfold.
The word was "reform". A palatable euphemism for the blatant capitalism that was taking place all over this vast land. You wait! In 30 years or so, this mind-blowing country would become the greatest nation on earth. But we, the present passengers of Victoria Pearl, would not be around. We would have long since embarked on SS Styx.
It was happy hour: 30% off all drinks in the Yangtze Bar. Later, I went up on deck, sought a quiet corner to re-read my Arthur Waley translation of Li Bai. The moon was shivering on the surface of the Long River. More than 1,000 years ago Li Bai wrote: "Drinking alone, with no friend near, raising my cup, I beckon the bright moon. My shadow included, we're a party of three."
Li Bai could match Dylan Thomas when it came to words and drink. In his cups he tried to embrace his beloved moon in the river. And drowned. It was ever thus.
All revelry had died on the lower decks. Sleep cocooned the entire ship. I peeped around corridors, hoping to spy at least one superannuated Lothario tapping on the cabin door of an expectant peripatetic widow. Sadly, no throaty voice whispered back. National Health dentures were all safely submerged in tumblers of bottled water in the bathrooms. There would be no orgasmic shrieks from Saga Sirens tonight.
Middle England was deep in endlessness. Like Li Bai, I also turned in. But I embraced my sleeping wife and not the Dragon River.
Next morning, wild monkeys ambled down from the heights to gape at us gapers. The balmy breezes of the Gorge caused the earlier humidity to vanish. The atmosphere was pure golden wine.
The world of the ship was serene, calm, perfect. But the world ashore, in China, was mind-blowing. Impressions kept coming thick and fast. You needed a holiday from this holiday.
We arrived at Fengdu. The Ghost City. In the temple horrendous stone ghost figures smashed each other, and ate stone babies. Sinister Tao monks grabbed yuan in exchange for a stick of incense. It was Madame Tussauds on Walpurgis Eve.
Our young guide possessed a nice sense of humour; she didn't bombard us with dreary statistics, the expected rice yield for the next five years. But rather she informed us about the lives, dreams, and problems of the local people. Fengdu town was an endless torrent of living people. Dogs, lizards, frogs and pheasants in cages, waiting to be poked and devoured. In two years, all this street life would disappear, drowned by the waters of the Yangtze. That park, the kids at their games. The toothless old men who were still too young to qualify for Saga. I looked up to where the new town was being constructed on top of the mountain above and felt sick.
I was amazed at the fortitude of some of the less-mobile travellers among us. Anne and Bob, despite being disabled, managed most of the arduous journeys with incredible humour. Sometimes, they struggled on the arm of a member of the crew, and sometimes they went up and down all the mountains carried in Sedan chairs.
"Having a good time?"
"Wonderful," they both shouted back. They were so brave and so life affirming. Their praise for the staff was absolute. "Marvellous. So caring." No brochure could claim more. Bob and Anne never moaned once. They will remain in my memory. Another shore trip was to witness the great dam under construction. More than 40,000 construction workers; busy, tireless men and women ants, massed on a mound; the largest construction site on earth. Their mission? To build a new China. To seek a glorious future. And in the process to eliminate the Three Gorges, one of the most beautiful sights on the planet. I could hear Kurt Vonnegut sighing. "So it goes."
It took three and a half hours to drive to the Yellow Mountains. When we arrived, Jimmy Rea from Glasgow produced his bagpipes and began to coax it to full croak. An astonished crowd of Chinese and Japanese tourists stood around, excited like five year olds as he led us upwards, playing Scotland the Brave. The path was gentle, but there was an awful lot of heavy breathing. And when we reached the summit, one of our three ladies from Galashiels tripped over the edge. It was a mile down. We all died, until she emerged bruised and smiling. A clump of bamboo sticks broke her fall, stopped her from becoming haggis.
Back in the coach. Our local guide announced that he would like to sing us a song. People groaned, but this did not stop him immediately plunging into his awful aria: "Edelweiss. Edelweiss. Everyone morning you greet me . . ." We clapped like mad when he finished.
On the long way back, all I can focus upon was the wonderful, bountiful dinner waiting for us.
When we finally clambered off the coach our guide told us how happy he had been to serve us, while his narrowing eyes clocked up the yuan that was pressed into his hand. Total ineptitude sometimes pays. Come to think of it, almost all the local guides were abysmal. But there were two exceptions, and both of these were young women.
Suddenly, like life, time quickened. Just as you settled in, you have to settle out. An aura pervaded the ship, telling us that this Saga was all over. The river opened out and we could barely see its banks. But factories in the foggy distance belched fire, and everywhere people were hurrying, scurrying, building. Gargantuan container ships loomed and the Yangtze had lost its close embrace. Its foghorns moaned, warning that Shanghai was fast coming towards us. It was all over. It was time for us to go.
I looked back for the last time at the long river. This truly was a Saga. More than 500m people were sustained by its endless journey. This river was the very lifeblood of this impossible and incredible land. It linked all the ages; the long history of China. But for me, it now sang a threnody. China was looking forward and was reinventing herself.
In 1956, Mao astonished the world by swimming across this Yangtze. Shortly after, he wrote a poem called Swimming: "Great plans are afoot . . . To hold back Wushan's clouds and rain. Till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges. The mountain God dess, if she is still there, will marvel at a world so changed."
But 1,000 years ago, Li Bai, that other poet, wrote: "Looking at the old river,/ From the opposite banks of a yellow ribbon/Like reading an ancient scroll./Pictographs of man's flailing/Against the eddies of oft-told histories."
Between these two visions, China is delicately balanced.
As we got off Victoria Pearl, Sonia from Cardiff and her breathless husband followed behind. "Did you enjoy yourself?" I asked.
"Immensely," she replied. "But I am a little disappointed. I thought Saga meant Sex and Games for the Aged. All I got were the games."
The practicals
The 10-night Yangtze to the Yellow Sea holiday with Victoria Cruises from Saga Holidays Ltd, Freepost, FO49, Sandgate, Kent CT20 3SE (0800 056 5880) costs from £1,349 per person, including flights and insurance, 10 breakfasts, six lunches and 10 dinners. Saga holidays are exclusively for people aged 50 and over. Austrian Airlines (0845 601 0948) flies three times a week from Heathrow to Beijing and Shanghai, and Virgin Atlantic (01293 747747) flies Heathrow to Shanghai, all from £614 return.
• Bernard Kops' latest book, Shalom Bomb, Scenes from My Life, is published by Oberon Books at £15.99.
