"At length we erupted from the gorge. The limestone formations fell away, and we moved all at once into a region of plutonic rocks. In a valley, nearly a mile, wide huge boulders of gneiss and granite, larger by far than our junk, lay strewn about, and straight across the line of the river, relenting only enough to grant it a shallow channel, curious dykes of greenstone and porphyry rose up out of the other stone. It was a primeval landscape, and it seemed to have been arranged by some force of fury. I was deeply moved and humbled by the sight of the trackers scrambling like tiny, purposeful crickets over the rough and intractable banks. We were all hopeless insects in this setting. My career, engineering, seemed only nonsense here. Nothing-absolutely nothing-could be done by man's puny will for this harsh valley littered with gigantic rocks."
-John Hersey, A Single Pebble, 1956John Hersey's Haunting Novel
John Hersey's words attempt to describe the strange beauty of the Yangtze River valley and the Three Gorges region. A Single Pebble is the story of a young American engineer sent to China to survey the Yangtze River for a possible dam site. The story begins by following this somewhat arrogant young man as he boards a Chinese junk for his voyage along the Yangtze. As the story begins, he thinks of himself as superior to the river people he meets along the way. He is book-learned, while they have a mostly oral tradition of learning. He counts the hours of his journey on his gold watch and observes that the owner of the junk and his wife, the cook, the head tracker and the rest of the trackers seem completely unaware of the passing of time. He comes to respect the love these people have of life and of the Great River, the Yangtze.
The talents and knowledge the river people possess come alive on the junk. Su-ling, the owner's wife, recites poetry and stories she has been taught by her ancestors. She teaches him of Chinese traditions, games and even songs. He listens as the head tracker, Old Pebble, sings beautiful melodies that give the trackers their rhythm and momentum. Finally, he finds himself looked down upon by some of the river people as different, as foreign, because he is not in touch with the land and the river. Perhaps it is also because they don't understand his values, just as he has failed to understand theirs. Still, he doesn't understand why they are threatened by the thought of man changing the river, of building the dam.
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