On Tuesday, 13 September 2011, a five-guytai contingent headed south out of Shanghai to look for a bore. No, the car (as nice as it was, courtesy of a wife's job with a major automotive firm) was too small to fit in a sixth guytai; rather, we were in pursuit of a tidal bore. In certain places of the world-where there's a wide, deep, east- or west-facing bay shaped like a funnel to a narrow, shallow river-the incoming tide is concentrated into a wave which can be meters in height. And lo, near Shanghai, we have one of the top three tidal bores in the world-some say the very biggest.

Although tides are twice-daily, a tidal bore's height is maximized once a year when the earth, sun, and moon are precisely aligned. In the case of Hangzhou Bay, this optimal scenario happens on the 18th day of the 8th lunar month, i.e. Mid-Autumn Festival, which was this past Monday. We had other things to do on that day so we went the following day, not knowing what to expect.

Online sources had led us to believe The Wave would pass at about noon. Yanguan, the village where the Qiantang River heads in from the ocean (and therefore where the bore should be greatest) has made a whole tourist event out of watching the wave (directed parking and all-think a football game); we drove about 2h15 to get there--south of Shanghai, a bit past the Ningbo Bridge but not as far as Hangzhou. We'd originally hesitated to go see it, after viewing online video of other spectators having been inundated, swept away, and even killed (ten casualties per year!), but in the event, everything's carefully controlled (it's China, after all), and our viewing platform kept us safely out of harm's way.

The Qiantang Jiang Dachao (aka Silver Dragon) has supposedly has reached 9 m in height, but ours was more "normal," at about 2.5 m. Perhaps less dramatic than the wave's passage (moving about as fast as a healthy guy could run at top speed, were we inclined toward exercise) was its approach; from a good ten minutes off, we could see a line of white on the ocean's horizon; then at ETA-5 we could hear its low growl (said by Chinese historical sources to approximate the hooves of a thousand horses); and then at ETA-1 we could feel its rumble, finally passing us about 12h22. The river's about a mile wide here, and the bore presents a fairly united front as it rolls in; there are reports of pleasure-seekers gamboling in it on their jet-skis, but the stretch we saw was completely empty of traffic-perhaps in anticipation of The Big One which didn't come this year, during the (as local signs announced) "18th Annual Tidal Bore Watching Festival." (Supposedly a pair of Americans-with permission, of course-surfed it in 2008.) We did have two copters buzzing us--one looked like perhaps a Chinese bazillionaire out for a look-see, and the other was remote-controlled by the CCTV crew covering the event.

Was it worth the CNY75 entrance fee? It would've been more worth it if we'd found the cold beer stand before the wave passed, rather than after sweating in the hot sun for an hour checking out the two-km-long viewing plaza. At any rate, we all got some good pictures (don't ask what Jerry's doing with his lens). But as a local oddity, who can beat a tidal bore? And we were back in time to meet our kids getting out of school. That's a guytai's job, right? Tough life.