The first gorge is very much like a weir and thus came the name "Qutang Gorge". It extends 8 km, starting from Baidicheng in the west and ending at Daixi Town in the east. The old construction complex on the mountain on the northern hilltop is Baidicheng, Immediately below it is Kui Men, the entrance to the first of the three gorges of the Yangtze River-the Qutang Gorge (also known by early Western travelers as the Wind Box Gorge). The shortest but grandest of them all, the gorge's widest point is only 150 meters (500 feet). Mists frequently swirl around the mysterious limestone peaks, some nearly 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) high, and the river rushes swift as an arrow through the narrow entrance, pounding the perpendicular cliff faces on either side of the gorge. It is the upper mouth of the Qutang section and is difficult for access. This gorge was a particularly dangerous stretch during high-water seasons and has been known to rise to 50 meters (165 feet).

Mount Baiyan is partly made of a huge white rock, which is a few dozen meters high and more than a thousand meters long. On its cliff face there are a number of inscriptions carved in styles of cursive, regular, official and seal scripts. The largest characters carved on this wall, known as Chalk Wall, are the inscriptions of verse originally penned by Sun Yuanliang and Li Haoduan. Sun's inscription goes like this: "Kuimen Pass is the most perilous passage in the world, but our boat lightly passed through." Li wrote in seal script: "Grand Kuimen Pass". Each character is three meters long.

Close to the Chalk Wall, one can clamber a flight of a few dozen steps to see a huge stalactite rock structure some twenty meters long with a height of six meters. It resembles a phoenix with its head lifted. A small stream flows down from where the neck would be called the Phoenix Drinking Fountain or Intermittent Fountain, as there is such a fountain near the Chalk Wall. Beside this fountain, there is a platform named Phoenix Platform. Standing on this platform, one can see the Baidi Temple, Fengxiang Gorge and an ancient plank road built along the edge of a cliff wall.

Many renowned people have been officials in the Kuizhou area. DuFu (712-770), a great Tang Dynasty poet, lived here nearly two years. During this period, he wrote many poems portraying the landscapes of Kuizhou, the local people and their life and customs. Now there is only a stone tablet remained in his former residence.

When your boat gets to the county seat of Wushan wedged between Qutang Gorge and Wuxia Gorge, you may get off there and take a side trip upstream on the Daning River, the chief tributary of the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges area, and find the Lesser Three Gorges. The Daning River is 300 kilometers long. The 50-kilometres-long stretch from Longmen Gorge in the south to Tujiaba in the north is even narrower than the narrowest part of the Three Gorges. The Longmen Gorge, the first of the Lesser Three Gorges, also has a little Kuimen. After passing through this gorge, one can reach Bawu Gorge and Dicui Gorge.