The site of the Three Throats (Chinese: 三峽; Pinyin: Sān Xiá,) or throats of the Yang-tseu-kiang is located downstream from the city Chongqing, in the south of the Monts Daba. They start in the Sichuan to finish in the Hubei. At their exit is built immense the Barrage of the Three-Throats.

The Three Throats offer an extraordinary spectacle which attracts many tourists and allowed the development of a true profitable tourism industry with many boats sailing between Chongqing and Yichang. These throats offer a mysterious atmosphere, when the fog and the clouds of water droplets fill up the throats and wrap the rock cliffs and pitons. At the time of the risings in summer, the level of water rises of more than 100 meters and navigation then becomes very dangerous and very risky.

Upstream, the first of the Three Throats is called Qutang , it is long of 8 km and shortest of the three, but it is most spectacular. The escarpées limestone frontages rise until: 1200 meters above the river and narrowly corsètent it in a 100 meters broad bed, obliging its flood to cross the throat to sharp pace. It is a splendid, poetic and romantic site with a complex network of hills, cliffs, rocks and caves.

The second of the Three Throats is called Wu , it 40 km is long, and offers also an extraordinary landscape with its twelve peaks which since always inspired the travellers and the poets. Their names evoke well the feelings which they inspire since one finds the Pic of the Goddess , the Pic of the Phoenix stealing , the Pic of the climbing Dragon or the Pic of the assembled Cranes . The slopes of the throat are sometimes so abrupt that one with the worrying impression that the sun penetrates only seldom to the river. After the rock of the iron Coffin, the traveller discovers the fast of Lint at the time of the descent of which powerful swirls and pillars limestones make any navigation perilous.

The third of the Three Throats is called Xiling , it is long 76 km. It is made up of a series of seven throats and two rapids, which make that it is most dangerous for navigation, because of the many swirls. It is also surrounded by peaks, rocks and hills forming an austere landscape decorated several monasteries and of some villages.

See too

• China
• Chang Jiang