Qutang, China ? Even with months of warning, the rising waters of the Yangtze River behind the Three Gorges Dam took thousands of people by surprise.

As the steadily rising reservoir lapped at their fields, villagers rushed Monday to uproot corn, sweet potatoes and vegetables they planted just weeks ago.

Engineers had posted signs showing where the water level will be when the reservoir, which started to fill on June 1, reaches its highest point. But in a sign of the confusion surrounding the world’s biggest hydroelectric project, and by sheer force of rural tradition, many planted in fields they had been told were doomed.

“Some farmers didn’t believe the signs and didn’t believe what the government said,” said Ding Xiangui, a farmer in Qutang, a hillside village in an inlet less than half a mile from the entrance to the famously scenic Qutang Gorge.

“They thought their fields were really high and wouldn’t be reached by water,” Ding said.

The Three Gorges Dam is unprecedented in the scale of both its construction and the dislocation imposed on people whose families have lived for centuries along the densely populated Yangtze.

Its 254-square-mile reservoir will flood scores of small cities, towns and villages — all now evacuated. The government is moving about 1.3 million people to higher ground, some as far away as Shanghai, 600 miles to the east.

Construction went ahead despite complaints about the $22 billion cost, relocations, environmental damage and flooding of temples and other cultural and archaeological sites.

Villagers row past a corn field inundated by rising waters at Qutang Village, near Fengjie, in central China's Chongqing municipality. Despite warnings from officials that waters would rise in June, many farmers planted crops because they were unsure of where the high water mark was on their land, while others did not believe that waters could rise so high more than 120 miles from the new Three Gorges Dam.

The government has promised to pay for new homes and farmland for relocated residents. But some villagers complain the payments are inadequate, and in a few cases accuse local officials of embezzling money meant for them.

Ding, the farmer in Qutang, about 120 miles upstream from the dam, once had a vegetable field of some 36,000 square feet. Now, he said, all but 1,300 square feet is under water.

“The government relocation program wasn’t carried out in this village, so we have no money,” he said.

The reservoir has been rising by six to 12 feet a day since June 1, when 19 of the dam’s 22 sluice gates were shut.

The 630-foot-tall concrete wall is nearly 1 1/2 miles wide.

There have been no reports of drownings in the eight days since the reservoir started to fill and no indications of any official efforts to prevent accidental drownings. However, as the rising water saturates hillsides, sections in some areas have collapsed into the water, creating a potential drowning hazard for those who remain behind to try to salvage crops or other property.