On November 17, the Consul having kindly offered me the use of his house-boat, I went down to Sha-shih, which is eighty miles from Ichang, and being with the current, the journey was made in one day.
It is not till the Yangtze reaches Sha-shih that its character completely changes. The first note of change is a great embankment, thirty feet high, which protects the region from inundation. Below Sha-shih the vast river becomes mixed up with a network of lakes and rivers, connected by canals, the area of the important Tungting Lake being over 2000 square miles.
Fortunately on this occasion the steam launch which had been sent forward to explore, at last hit upon an eight-foot passage, and by evening we reached the port of Sha-shih, where, owing to further reports of shallow water ahead, we anchored for the night.
I-ch'ang (q.v.) and Shasi (Sha-shih) farther up the Yangtze in south central Hupeh are important provincial and commercial centres. South of Sha-shih is the Ch'ing-chiang (Kingkiang) flood detention basin or reservoir covering about 350 sq.mi.
1976, Charlton M. Lewis, Prologue to the Chinese Revolution: The Transformation of Ideas and Institutions in Hunan Province, 1891-1907, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 16:
By the middle of June there had been additional disturbances at Chinkiang, Tan-yang, Wu-hsi and Soochow along the Grand Canal, and at Wu-hsueh, Kiukiang and Sha-shih on the Yangtze.
Chinese place names are listed in three common spelling styles:[…](1) the Post Office system,[…](2) the Wade-Giles system,[…]shown after the main entry[…](3) the Chinese Communists' own Pinyin romanization system, which also appears in parentheses[…]Shasi (Shashi, Shashih)