I am planning a four-week China do-it-yourself independent tour and wondering if I should include 3-4 day Yangtze River cruise. If you have limited time to travel China, or in a guided tour, this might be a good choice, but I think I will cover a lot of places on foot in 4-5 weeks and wonder this is worth the extra cost of 400-500 dollars.

We did the cruise some time back and thought it was a waste of time and money. There is very little to see as you travel on the boat since the villages on the banks of the river are gone. There are some excursions but they are not particularly worthwhile. More details here:

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...on-our-own.cfm

Marija is correct. When they built the damn a decade ago, they flooded the villages. It's really sad.

China is a huge country and you can certainly keep yourself busy for the whole four to five weeks. You could also see some of the Silk Road or head north into Tibet. The possibilities are endless.

Thank you, Marija and CaliforniaLady. Although your responses are what I expected, I was somewhat surprised by not receiving any opposing views from those who have been on the cruise.

We were advised to take a Yangtze cruise before the new damn flooded out towns, villages, historic sites, etc. I wonder what there really is to see. We enjoyed it in 2001 but it certainly wasn't a highlight of our trip.

It depends on your travel profile. Some people (rather few) like it. They are mostly the older travellers who like to do group tours. China has a lot of interesting places to offer, most of which would rank ahead of this cruise.
I have been to the Three Gorges without doing the cruise and it was just ok. Not really worth the detour. But in my case, I had another reason to ne there.