Capital of Hebei Province
Wuhan lies at the confluence of the Changjiang and Hanshui rivers, in the east of Hebei province, on the Beijing-Canton rail route.
Wuhan is a traffic hub and vital industrial and commercial center as well as being a city of
culture and politics. There are rich deposits of iron-ore in the surrounding countryside, and a giant iron and steel combine has grown up here.
The city can be divided into three districts - Wuchang in the east, Hankou in the north and Hanyang in the south; at one time these were all independent towns and separated from one another by the Changjiang and Hanshui rivers. Wuhan's name is in fact formed from the first syllables of the names of these three towns.
Wuchang, the oldest of the three towns, was provided with fortifications as long ago as the Han period (206 BC-AD 220) and was the capital of Huguang province. The peasants' revolutionary army led by Chen Youliang made it its headquarters in the second half of the 14th C Wuchang has functioned as the provincial capital since the early 20th C. In 1911 an uprising against Qing rule broke out here.
Hanyang was founded in the Sui period (581-618). China's very first iron and steel works came into operation here at the end of the 19th C. Today light industry predominates.
Hankou was just a village until 1858, when the Western powers made it a trading port. Britons, French, Germans and Russians settled here and soon made it into a commercial center. This development was assisted by the building of the Beijing-Hankou railroad. This in turn produced a proletariat which formed the basis of the revolutionary movement.
Much of Hankou's architecture still betrays a strong European influence.
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