There the soul is onefold, pure and chaste, and empty of all things.

A lackey that […] can warble upon a crowd a little.

[…]—I hollooed, but ye didn’t hear me, for I saw him catch ye just at the back of the head, in the large o’ the neck—a ticklish sort of a place—and down ye went—lor, sir, for all the world like a pig o’ lead. I never thought to have heard ye speak in this world again, ye went down so deadlike! and now the worst is over, a hard time ye’ve had of it and no wonder!

The Three Gorges have always been one geographic entity, but rarely a political one, a situation that has affected the overall development of the region, leaving Badong and Zigui counties cut off administratively and culturally from the Sichuan towns to the west and physically, by the hazards of Xiling Gorge, from Yichang and the rest of Hubei to the east.