Wuhan is a city of 12 million on the Yangtze river in central China, formed from the merger of three old towns — Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang — at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Han. It became globally known for the wrong reasons in early 2020, but for travellers Wuhan is a major Yangtze port city with genuinely interesting historical layers, excellent street food, and a position that makes it a natural stopover between Beijing/Shanghai and the south-west.
The Yellow Crane Tower (Huanghelou), on Snake Hill in Wuchang, is the city's symbol — a five-storey pagoda-style tower that has been rebuilt many times since its first construction in 223 AD and is one of the "Three Great Towers" of southern China. The current version dates from 1985 and the view from the top over the Yangtze and the city skyline is the classic Wuhan panorama. Across the river in Hankou, the old treaty-port concession districts along Yanjiang Dadao still have streets of European-style banks, consulates, and trading houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries — British, French, German, Russian, and Japanese, all in a row, a physical encyclopedia of colonialism.
The Hubei Provincial Museum is one of the best museums in China, anchored by the extraordinary set of 65 bronze bells (the Bianzhong of Marquis Yi) excavated from a 2,400-year-old tomb — the largest and most complete set of ancient musical instruments ever found, and they are still playable. The remarkable Sword of Goujian sits in the same museum. The Guiyuan Temple, a 17th-century Buddhist temple with 500 individually carved luohan (arhat) statues, is a quieter stop. East Lake, the biggest urban lake in China, occupies most of eastern Wuchang and has the Wuhan University campus — famous for its spring cherry blossoms — on its western shore. Mao Zedong's East Lake Villa, where he stayed more than anywhere outside Beijing, is open as a museum nearby. In Hanyang, the Qintai Grand Theatre marks the legendary site where a Han dynasty musician smashed his instrument after losing the only person who truly understood his music, and the Hanyang Arsenal Heritage Site preserves the vast weapons factory that armed Qing China's modernisation effort.
Wuhan is a food city. Hot dry noodles (re gan mian) — alkaline noodles tossed in sesame paste, soy, chili oil, and pickled vegetables — are the local breakfast and one of China's iconic regional noodles. The night-food streets around Hubu Alley in Wuchang and Jiqing Street in Hankou are packed with stalls selling duck neck (Wuhan's most famous snack export, via the Zhou Hei Ya chain), stinky tofu, grilled skewers, and lotus-root soup.
Wuhan is well connected by high-speed rail: about 4 hours from Beijing, 4 from Shanghai, 5 from Guangzhou. It is also the traditional starting or ending point for Yangtze river cruises through the Three Gorges.