Along with Sinoscuba impresario Steven "Commando" Schwankert, Imagethief hauled himself and approximately four tons of gear out to Xifenghu on Sunday to dive a sunken section of Great Wall. Xifenghu is a reservoir near Tangshan. It takes about three and a half hours to drive out to and, as we discovered, nearly six to return from when your drivers inexplicably decide to follow a route that is technically shorter as the crow flies but that swaps an immense expressway for narrow, windy mountain rouds. At least it was scenic.

Xifenghu is a narrow reservoir created by an immense and rather fantastic looking dam. Oddly, when we bought our tickets to enter the reservoir recreation area, we were warned that photography of the dam was prohibited due to "Olympic security". I found this a bit mystifying, as I can't imagine a dam in Tangshan ranks as high on the list of Olympic terrorism targets as the Bird's Nest, the airport, Tian'anmen Square and about a thousand other things I can think of. Also, given that there were countless kilometers of unguarded road offering magnificent, unobstructed views, that I had already videotaped the dam extensively during the drive up, and that the ban seemed totally unenforced within the park, the whole exercise seemed a little pointless. Still, I suppose the idea was to let us know that the local authorities were Taking Olympic Security Seriously.

So surface photography was out, but a bunch of shady looking foreigners with scuba gear, underwater cameras, and an Associated Press Television News camera crew in tow was somehow OK. It worked in our favor, so I wasn't one to complain, but it did all seem a little odd. (On our endless drive back we were also stopped for a "special Olympic security inspection" near the Hebei-Beijing border. They checked our drivers' papers and the boots of the cars, but didn't ask for any of our papers, which was just as well since we weren't carrying them.)

Conditions for diving were not ideal. The reservoir was a good ten meters down from its peak judging from both the sluice gates on the secret dam and the waterline on the hillsides. It also rained heavily late last week. That made for silty diving and awful visibility. The section of wall we dove was in very shallow water, with the deepest section at only seven or eight meters. The one guard tower on the stretch we were diving actually projected from the water.

I shot some underwater video, but the conditions meant that it was not brilliant stuff. I passed my vide to the AP team, which also filmed us at the surface and interviewed us. The report has already run on broadcast outlets (my mother in law saw it on Singapore's Chinese news). There are a couple of "gee whiz" versions on the web right now, including one from the Christian Broadcasting Network's China blog (yes, they have one too) and one from an East Texas morning chat show.

Of the two, the CBN one is more interesting, with a bigger write up (including some florid quotes from yours truly), a smidgeon of location sound, and some of the underwater video. The Texan one is more interesting for the performance of the anchors, but you have to sit through a short ad for "sedation dentistry" to get to it.

Despite the conditions we had a good time. Diving almost always beats sitting at home. Imagethief will have a more extensive video report on this excursion ready by the end of the weekend, assuming I can get my tape back from the AP.

Imagethief gets his suit on 

Texas TV broadcasts your correspondent suiting up.

Previously:

Brief video from our dives on the sunken Lion City in Zhejiang, two years ago. A longer video on this is also in the works. But, then, it has been in the works for two years.