Visisted May 2019. The Baiheliang (White Crane Ridge) Hydrological Inscription is located in the town of Fuling (涪陵) which is conveniently linked with ChongQing – you can go there by train, but no direct buses. The trains depart from ChongQing North and you can end up in Fuling City train station or Fuling North train station. The trip takes between 30 minutes and one hour and a half, depending on the train. To get to the museum where the hydrological inscriptions are kept underwater take a direct bus 119 from Fuling North or bus 102 Fuling city train station to the city centre and change to bus 302. The bus stop is just across the street from the museum.

Believe it or not, but when I got to the museum on Sunday morning, there were no other tourists! As Zoë said most of the informative panels are in Chinease, but now you can get an English audio-guide with pretty detailed information about the rock itself, the inscriptions on it, the fish symbols in the water measuring system and about concept of the museum and its underwater part which looks like fish (of course you will not be able to see it, but there’s no reason not to believe). And another good news is that some people working for the museum do speak English.

As you enter the museum you’ll notice two big multilingual boards stating that “UNESCO supports our heritage” and “Our future world heritage site to be inscribed soon”. Well, does it mean China will nominate it soon? I asked the staff and they told me they started the process of preparing all necessary materials…

After visiting the exposition on the ground level I was taken down the escalator to the underwater part – on the day I was there, it was 27 meters deep below the level of Yangtze (ChangJiang) River – there are electronic panels indicating the depth. Here you must be accompanied by a museum guide. Now you can see the Baiheliang itself! The weather was good and water clear so I could enjoy inscriptions and fish carved on the ridge. The girl guide told me so many about it, even quoting Chines poems written on the rock face – in Chines of course. There’s no any chronological or logical order among more than one hundred of inscriptions; the oldest one is probably from Tang Dynasty, but only inscriptions from Song Dynasty can be first exactly dated.

I spent more than one hour in the museum and must admit that I found it very interesting; if you have no time to go there and want to see some carvings, you can visit Three Gorges Museum in ChongQing where they have some carvings on permanent display.