Langs de oevers van de Yangtze - Season 1

Love and luck is not that easy in China. It is a serious problem if you are not married before your 30s, but how do Chinese meet their loved ones? Many high educated woman remain single as it is not common for a man to marry someone of his own position and similar level of education. It's even more alarming for those low-educated men trying to find a lady, but never succeed to establish a family. No wonder that Nanjing's infamous bridge is famous for the most suicides in our world. Ruben is witness of a hilarious marriage proposal and follows a flirt-course for disadvantaged nerds.

Mao Zedong is ever popular in China. After all he is the founder of the current Peoples Republic. The fact that tens of millions of civilians lost their lives under his reign is attributed to the 30% of things he did wrong. For 70% of all of Mao's actions were good according to official statements. Risking his own life, Ruben tries to swim across the Yangtze as Mao used to do on television and has meeting with China's most famous Mao Zedong impersonator. Afterwards he visits a community of fishermen that now live in a -Kevin Costner like Waterworld- village on the shallow Honshu lake. These fisherman fled the famine Mao created after he declared sparrows to be a plague, thoroughly disrupting ecology and agriculture.

Ruben visits the Three Gorges Dam, China's pride and joy when it comes to man-made-structures. The dam is considered a great victory on nature. But nature and culture have suffered for its creation as 90 villages and 13 cities have had to be evacuated and left under the water's surface. Ruben's meeting with a river-guide is suspiciously cancelled, but a local fisherman is willing to help him find a finless porpoise, but not so willing to talk about the negative ecological consequences of the dam. The crew of a cruise ship sailing the Yangtze dreams of times when they were still able to fish for a living on a, then, smaller rapid.