About Hubei

Wuhan sits where the Yangtze meets the Han; the city still carries three older names with it. Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang are one now, but they remain useful labels when you are crossing a river, changing stations or asking for directions.武汉就在长江和汉江交汇处。武昌、汉口、汉阳如今合成一座城，但这三个名字在过江、换站或者问路的时候，还是最好用的说法。 That is plain enough...

Sun Quan ordered furnaces built at Tieshan in 226 AD to forge weapons for his fledgling kingdom, tapping ore deposits so rich that miners kept returning to the same hills on and off for the next seventeen centuries, using methods his blacksmiths never imagined. 公元二二六年,孙权下令在铁山建造炉窑,为其新立的政权铸造兵器,此地矿藏之丰富,以至于此后十七个世纪间,矿工们断断续续始终未曾离开这片山地,所用的方法,早已是这些铁匠们无法想象的。 Long...

Monks at Wudang's Golden Peak still light incense at 1,612 metres, on one of the steepest summits in the Taoist canon; Mi Fu, a Song dynasty painter, is said to have called this range the foremost mountain under heaven. 武当山金顶海拔一千六百一十二米,僧人至今仍在此焚香祈福,是道教名山中地势最为险峻的峰顶之一;相传宋代书画家米芾曾赞誉这座山为"天下第一山"。 The Yongle Emperor ordered large-scale construction...

Seven divisions under Yu Jin drowned outside Fancheng in 219 AD, when a sudden flood sent the Han River over its banks; Guan Yu, watching from higher ground, seized his chance, forced a surrender and doomed a rival general to execution. 公元二一九年,于禁所率的七支军队在樊城城外溃败于突如其来的洪水之中,汉水暴涨、决堤而出;关羽居高临下,趁势出击,迫使于禁投降,而另一员敌将则因此被处死。 West of the city,...

Sun Quan renamed this city Wuchang in 221 AD, founding the Kingdom of Wu here and later proclaiming himself emperor within its walls in 229, before moving his capital to Jianye, present-day Nanjing, that same year; the name Wuchang stayed attached to this city...

Nine kilometres south of the tomb at Guodian lie the ruins of Ying, capital of the ancient state of Chu for four centuries; in 1993, workers opened a nearby Warring States burial and found bamboo slips bearing the oldest known copy of the Daoist...

Every Saturday afternoon, a free opera performance draws a small crowd into a pavilion inside Dong Yong Park, retelling a story that gave the city its name; most in the audience have heard it before, and come back anyway. 每逢周六下午,亭中都会上演一场免费的地方戏,吸引不少人前来观看,讲述的正是这座城市名字的由来;台下大多数人早已听过这个故事,却依然一次次前来。 The story is that of Dong...

Jingzhou sits in the heart of the Jianghan Plain in central Hubei, straddling the middle Yangtze at the point where the river's ancient shipping lanes meet some of China's oldest continuously settled ground. 荆州地处湖北中部江汉平原腹地，横跨长江中游，境内古老的航运水道与中国最早持续有人定居的土地在此交汇。 Administratively, the city covers 14,100 square kilometres across two urban districts, two...

Huanggang sits on the Yangtze's north bank in eastern Hubei, its territory climbing from the river plain into the southern slopes of the Dabie Mountains, at the point where Hubei, Henan, Anhui and Jiangxi meet. 黄冈地处湖北东部长江北岸，境内地势由沿江平原向大别山南麓逐渐抬升，恰好处在湖北、河南、安徽、江西四省交界之处。 Administratively, the city covers 17,457 square kilometres across one urban...

Hubei calls Xianning its "southern gate", a reference to it being that last stretch of the province before the Yangtze's south bank opens up to give way to Hunan Province and Jiangxi Province in the southern distance. 湖北人称咸宁为"湖北南大门"，这里是长江南岸进入湖南、江西之前的最后一段。 Administratively, Xianning covers just over 10,000 square kilometres,...

Suizhou sits in a hilly belt where the Jianghan Plain gives way to the Central Plain. The roads rise early, and the built-up parts sit in the folds of the land. A 2024 city bulletin puts Suizhou’s GDP at ¥144.235 billion. Other city data...

Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture is the full name. After that, Enshi will do. It sits in south-western Hubei and remains the province’s only autonomous prefecture.恩施土家族苗族自治州是全称，后面直接说恩施就行。它在湖北西南部，也是湖北唯一的自治州。 The prefecture covers about 24,000 square kilometres. In the old founding report from 1983, 73 percent of that...