HUBEI
PROVINCE

Wuhan
Wuhan, the largest city in central China, is in fact an amalgamation of three cities Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang - on the middle reaches of the Yangtse River. The oldest of the three is Wuchang on the eastern bank, which has been a provincial capital for a number of centuries, but Wuhan only developed into a major commercial and industrial centre after the foreign powers, led by Britain, forced the imperial government to open up the Yangtse to foreign trade in 1861, following the second Opium War. The foreigners built their enclaves across the river in Hankou (then spelled Hankow), and the arrival of the railway in the 1920s further speeded development. World-wide economic depression and the Japanese war in the 1930s and 1940s, however, forced many factories to close, although Wuhan was once more built up as an important industrial base after 1949. Today, it is a city of three million people with several important industries, including the Wuhan Iron and Steel Works, one of the country's biggest. The heavy industry has given the city a bad air pollution problem, but it is still an interesting place to visit, and Hankou especially is worth walking round. But be warned: in mid-summer it lives up to its reputation as one of the 'ovens' of China.

Wuhan has been the scene of two important incidents in China's recent history: the first uprising in the 1911 Revolution which over-threw the last imperial dynasty and established the Republic of China under Sun Yatsen took place here, as did one of the most serious political crises of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.

The revolution of 1911 started early by accident when two revolutionaries were arrested by the imperial authorities after a bomb exploded in their house in Wuchang. The leaders of the planned uprising decided to bring their plans forward and rose on 10 October, the date still considered by the Nationalists on Taiwan to be China's national day. During the street battles between imperial troops and local revolutionaries, virtually the whole of Hankou was burned to the ground, but the rebels won and the uprising sparked a series of incidents in other parts of the country, the governors of many provinces seizing the opportunity to declare their independence from the central government.



In February 1923, there were bloody riots in Hankou after a strike by workers building the north-south railway was crushed by the government. In late 1937, Wuhan briefly became the capital of China as the Nationalist government fled westwards from Nanking before the advancing Japanese armies.

The Cultural Revolution was another eventful time for Wuhan. On 16 July 1966, Chairman Mao, then 73 years old, is supposed to have swum across the Yangtse at Wuhan. At the time, few people had an inkling of the Cultural Revolution that he was about to unleash on the country, but with hindsight it is clear that Mao used the swim as a way of telling his opponents that he was still a force to be reckoned with.

The climax of the early part of the Cultural Revolution was the so-called 'Wuhan Incident' of July 1967, a confrontation between two political factions in the city which reportedly resulted in thousands of deaths.

In the summer of 1967, the whole of China was seething with revolutionary fervour as young people, and many older people too, banded together in organisations pledged to defend Chairman Mao's correct revolutionary line. There were, of course, differences of opinion about what that line constituted. In Wuhan, a group called the Million Heroes sprang up, which was opposed to many of the extremist policies being propagated in Peking. Lined up against them were the radical Wuhan Workers General Headquarters. The local military commander decided to support the Million Heroes, which by mid-July had more than 1.2 million members. Information on what exactly happened in the incident is sketchy, but according to one report, the first serious clash occurred on 19 June when members of the two groups fought each other on the bridge spanning the Yangtse, leaving several people dead.

During the following month, the situation in Wuhan became so sensitive that the central government sent a delegation to the city, consisting of Premier Chou Enlai, Wang Li (another Party leader) and Xie Fuzhi, the Minister of Public Security. Mao also happened to be in town at the time, planning to swim the Yangtse again, as he had done to great propaganda effect the year before.

Meanwhile, the Million Heroes had been branded a 'reactionary organisation'. Chou and Mao kept out of sight, but the other two members of the delegation were surrounded by irate representatives of the Million Heroes, demanding to be told why they had been labelled reactionary. On 20 July, the Heroes seized Wang Li and paraded him through the city as crowds taunted and beat him, shouting 'Down with Wang Li'.' Commando squads of the Million Heroes organisation decided the time had come to wipe out the radicals, who were holding the Wuhan University campus and the Iron and Steel Works. With at least the tacit approval of the local army units, the Heroes, armed with machine guns, stormed the radical barricades and captured both places after a bloody fight.

At 2.00 the next morning, Mao flew out of Wuhan in extreme secrecy, and once back in Peking, issued a directive praising the Wuhan Workers General Headquarters as being 'revolutionary', and said the Million Heroes had been misled by 'some military leaders in Wuhan'. The upshot of the incident was that the Wuhan military commander was arrested and taken to Peking, while the Million Heroes were suppressed in a terrible campaign which, according to official figures released in 1980, left 184000 people either dead, wounded or trippled. The madness of the Cultural Revolution now seems a long way away, and there are naturally no monuments in the city commemorating the political and military battles of the late 1960s.

There is, however, a tomb honouring those who died in the 1911 revolution in Hankou, but at last report, the tomb compound was being used as a wood storage yard, which hardly seems in keeping with its historical significance. (From the Xuangong Hotel, take the No.7 bus heading northeast along zhongshan Dadao, get off at Qiuchang Lu and the tomb is on the right.)

MAO TSE-TUNG lived in Wuhan briefly in 1926, and his residence (41 Dufuti) and the CENTRAL PEASANT MOVEMENT INSTITUTE (13 Hong-xiang) where he taught are both maintained as tourist sites. (From the Xuangong Hotel, walk down Jianghan Jie to the river, and take a No.1 ferry to Wuchang. Turn left, walk along the river and turn right at the first intersection.)

The PROVINCIAL MUSEUM on the shores of the Dong Hu (east lake) is worth a visit. (Take a No.1 ferry to Wuchang, then a No.14 bus from the nearby terminus to the end of the line. Walk back along the road and the museum is on the left.) The EAST LAKE is as picturesque as a lake can be in the middle of a polluted industrial city. It is one of the largest in east China and has a number of pavilions around it. (The No.14 bus terminus is close to the park entrance.)

The only temple in Wuhan is the GUIYUAN TEMPLE in Hanyang, a 300-year-old structure, which contains a white jade Buddha and a complete set of the Buddhist sutras, one of the few in China. Near the main entrance, you will see people trying to get small coins to stick to the smooth, vertical sides of an old bronze incense burner. It looks impossible, but it can be done, and those who succeed are supposed to be granted good fortune.

Food
Wuhan's most famous dish is Wuchang fish (Wuchang yu), which Chairman Mao liked enough to mention in one of his poems. Apart from the hotels, there are a number of good restaurants on Zhong-shan Dadao, the main street through the centre of Hankou.

How to get there and where to stay
Wuhan is linked to all major Chinese cities by air, and is on the main north-south railway line from Peking to Canton. Ferries also ply up and down the Yangtse from Chongqing in the west down to Nanking and Shanghai in the east.

The most popular hotel is the Xuangong (45 Jianghan Lu in Hankou; take the No.7 bus from the railway station, and get off at the second stop). Other hotels, all in Hankou, include the Shengli (Victory; ii Siwei Lu) and the Jianghan Hotel (211 Shengli Lu), both of which have good restaurants and are within walking distance of the railway station. The local Friendship Store is next to the Jianghan Hotel. If you arrive in Wuhan by ferry - from Chongqing, for example you will land at the main Hankou terminal. Walk along Jianghan Lu at right angles to the river past five intersections and the Xuangong Hotel will be on the left.

Shennongjia
In this inaccessible mountainous area in northwest Hubei Province, there may live a tribe of wild apemen, relatives of the Himalayan Yeti and of Big Foot on the west coast of North America. There have been endless sightings of these Chinese 'Wild Men' and scientists combing the densely forested area during the past couple of years have found some interesting evidence to suggest that they do exist. But as with other monsters and apemen the world over, the Wild Men of Hubei always seem to be able to evade capture.

The official Chinese magazine, China Reconstructs, published a long article on the Wild Men of Shennongjia in 1979 which contained the following eye-witness account from a peasant who had encountered one of them in a gully two years earlier:

He was about seven feet tall with shoulders wider than a man's, a sloping forehead, deep-set eyes and a bulbous nose with slightly upturned nostrils. He had sunken cheeks and ears like a man's but bigger, and round eyes also bigger than a man's.

His arms hung down below his knees. He had big hands with fingers about six inches long and with thumbs only slightly separated from the fingers. Re didn't have a tail and the hair on his body was short. He had thick thighs and walked upright with his legs apart. He was a male. That much I saw clearly.

Whoever he was, he certainly sounds like a Neandrthal caveman.

One of the Wild Men's strange habits, according to one report, is that when they come upon a human, they grab him by the arm and refuse to let go. Some peasants reportedly counter this by carrying bamboo arm sheaths so that, when a Wild Man catches them, they can slip their arms out of the sheaths and escape.

And if that sounds ridiculous, what about this: a Shanghai news-paper reported in 1980 that one of the scientists tracking the Wild Men had brought an ape suit with him so he could get close to the creatures, and 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of dates to give them as an 'introductory present'. 'If there really are creatures that are half-man, half-ape I want to go among them and become one of them,' he said.

A major hunt for the creatures was mounted in 1980, and the scientists involved found 1000 huge footprints and other telltale signs including bits of hair and excrement. In March 1981, one Shanghai newspaper reported that two scientists had actually caught sight of a Wild Man sitting on a rock about 250 yards (225 metres) from them.

'It had long hair hanging over its shoulders and particularly long thighs,' the paper said. One of the scientists raised his rifle to shoot the apeman, but the other restrained him, and as they made their way towards him, the apeman disappeared while out of view for a moment. Another piece of evidence reported by the Chinese press was the discovery of a woman in the Shennongjia area who was allegedly captured by the creatures and later gave birth to a 'monkey child'. The Guangming Daily published in Peking reported that the woman disappeared for 27 days in 1939. 'She admitted that she had been seized by the apemen but denied having any relations with them,' it said.

The monkey child that she bore died in 1960 aged 21, but its bones were recently dug up and examined. 'From photographs and an analysis of the skeleton, the child had both the characteristics of an ape and a human. But it is impossible for a human and an ape to procreate as they are of different species, so an ape could not have been the father of the monkey child. Based on the fact that the Wild Men appear to be active in that area, it is probable that the child was a cross-breed between a civilised human being and a "Wild Man",' the newspaper said.

Evidence of their existence there may be, but the Wild Men lumbering around the forests of Shennongjia have shown themselves to be extraordinarily adept at avoiding scientists. The mystery will probably be solved around the same time as the Loch Ness monster is trapped. That is, most likely, never.

How to get there
You can't. Foreigners are not allowed anywhere near Shennongjia, a rugged, and probably very poor region. The nearest you can get to it is by floating down the Yangtse River from Chongqing to Wuhan. As you pass through the Yangtse Gorges, Shennongjia is on your left, about 100 miles (160 kilometres) into the hills.

Yichang
This industrial town just below the Gezhouba dam project on the Yangise River is a convenient place to get off the ferry from Chong-qing if you don't want to float down to Wuhan and beyond.

There is a railway line from Yichang heading north to xiangfan and Luoyang. To get to the railway station from the ferry wharf, turn left and walk to the bus terminus nearby. A bus leaves from there for the station.