The Yangtze River has overwhelmed General Zhang Fei once before, in 1870, covering the temple containing him and his companions with floodwaters that reached 150 metres. But the 600-kilometre reservoir of the Three Gorges, which will climb 175 metres and inundate 27,280 hectares of farmland, will not swallow General Zhang up - his entire temple is to be moved, piece by piece, to a new site on dry land 30 km upriver.
Zhang is faring better in death than in life. Renowned in the Chinese world through a famous novel and television dramas, he was instrumental in putting his close friend Liu Bei on the throne of the kingdom of Shu in 221 AD. He is a by-word for courage and loyalty. In one legendary incident, he is said to have faced off an army of hundreds of thousands by standing on a bridge. None of the enemy dared to cross it to confront him, and they retreated. But one night, grief-stricken by the death of his brother, he got drunk and had his head cut off by an inferior with a grudge against him. According to legend, supporters carried it off down the Yangtze before it was thrown into the river by those fearful of an attack against them. But the head was retrieved by the Yunyang people, who buried it in the mountain, built a temple to his memory and kept a place for him in their hearts.
His statue dominates the temple, a broad smile surveying the thousands of tourists who shuffle past.
Moving the three-storey temple is the biggest cultural preservation scheme in the Three Gorges project, costing more than 100 million yuan (HK$93.35 million).
'Our biggest headache is to find a similar site to this one,' said Lu Zhou, associate professor of architecture at Qinghua University, who is in charge of the project. 'We have picked several sites and will choose one of them.' The temple, constructed 1,700 years ago, sits on the side of a steep hill running into the Yangtze. Professor Lu must find a topography exactly similar. The temple also contains statues of Zhang's comrades-in-arms and Buddhas and poems carved on wood tablets by famous calligraphers.
The structure and statues were first rebuilt after the 1870 flood.