BEIJING - Humanity's most ambitious campaign to conquer nature, a gargantuan dam across the Yangtse River, has hit an unyielding obstacle - a frail archaeology professor determined to salvage 5,000 years of Chinese history from a man made flood and launch an emergency rescue mission of a scale not seen since Noah boarded his ark.
With only eight months to go before China's longest river is blocked by huge concrete slabs to complete the first stage of a 17 year Three Gorges project, Professor Yu Weichao is spearheading a rare public challenge to the priorities of a Communist Party leadership dominated by Soviet trained engineers.
"As a nation, we want economic development but we can't toss away our history and culture for the sake of economic progress," said Prof Yu, director of the National Museum of Chinese History, overlooking Tiananmen Square.
Scheduled for completion in 2009 the Three Gorges dam project will create an inland sea - critics say a giant cesspool of silt and sewage - that will stretch more than 400 miles and flood more than 140 towns, 320 villages, priceless antiquities and sublime scenery celebrated by China's greatest poets. Some 1.2 million people are being moved to higher ground.
Before the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 critics of what was then only a proposal to dam the Three Gorges condemned it as wasteful, dangerous and destructive. A crackdown on all dissent after the killing in Tiananmen silenced the anti dam lobby.