the Guangming Daily (光明日報) (Enlightenment Daily) and she remained as a columnist from 1982 to 1989. Dai was the first Chinese journalist to announce the views and points of dissidents — people such as astrophysicist Fang Lizhi (方勵之), who held different political views. At that time, Dai was a dedicated patriot. She once said that she would die if Mao Zedong (毛澤東) needed her to do so—but after three to five years, she gradually changed her stance. Dai wanted to understand her community and the lives of ordinary citizens through the eyes of a journalist. She hoped to be able to contribute to the community. Dai has a quixotic style of sudden asides in her writing, which may occasionally confuse the reader. At times, her biting sarcasm may be lost on those not intimately acquainted with China's political and journalistic culture. Opposition against the Three Gorges Dam In 1979, when Dai Qing returned from France to China, she was sent south to cover the Sino-Vietnamese War. At that period, she decided to reveal the dark side of the Three Gorges Dam. As a famous and fearless China journalist and writer, Dai hoped her writing would encourage Chinese people to speak out and avoid repeating past mistakes. Thus, she openly opposed the Three Gorges Dam Project (三峽工程) on the Yangtze River (長江) in 1989. She regarded the project as "the most environmentally and socially destructive project in the world". She collected a lot of information on the project which led to the publication of the book Yangtze! Yangtze! (是否该进行长江三峡水坝的工程). The information included interviews and essays from the Chinese scientists and journalists who also opposed the project. During the period, a conference was held in the Hall of Chinese People's Political Forum about the Three Gorges Dam, and Dai was the only reporter who attended and reported the forum. She even went to Japan in 1996 to ask the Japanese government not to provide loans or any kind of financial assistance for that project. She argued that there was already serious emigration today, either legal or illegal, from China to other countries, like Canada, the United States, Europe and so on. The project would create a large number of refugees who had to find a place for them to reside. As a result, the legal or illegal emigration problem would be aggravated. In addition, the project would have had global effect on