( ;
Postal map spelling:
Hupeh) is a central province of the People's
Republic of China
. Its abbreviation is 鄂 (
pinyin: È), an ancient name associated with the
eastern part of the province since the
Qin
Dynasty.
The name Hubei means "north of the
lake", referring to Hubei's position north of Lake Dongting
. The capital of Hubei is Wuhan
.
Hubei
borders Henan
to the
north, Anhui
to the east,
Jiangxi
to the southeast, Hunan
to the
south, Chongqing
to the west, and Shaanxi
to the
northwest. The high-profile Three Gorges Dam
is located in Yichang
, in western
Hubei.
A popular unofficial name for Hubei is
Chu ( ), after the
powerful
state of Chu that existed here
during the
Eastern Zhou
Dynasty.
History
By the
Spring and Autumn
Period (770 BC - 476 BC), Hubei was home to the powerful
state of Chu.
Chu was nominally a
tributary state of the Zhou Dynasty,
and it was itself an extension of the Chinese civilization that had
emerged some centuries before in the north; but it was also
culturally unique, and was a powerful state that held onto much of
the middle and lower Yangtze River
, with power extending northwards into the North China Plain.
During the
Warring States Period (475 BC
- 221 BC) Chu became the major adversary of the upstart state of Qin to the northwest (in what is now
Shaanxi province), which began to assert itself by outward
expansionism. As wars between Qin and Chu ensued, Chu lost
more and more land: first its dominance over the Sichuan Basin
, then (in 278 BC) its heartland, which correspond
to modern Hubei. In 223 BC Qin chased down the remnants of
the Chu regime, which had fled eastwards, as part of Qin's bid for
the conquest of all China.
Qin founded the
Qin Dynasty in 221 BC,
the first unified state in China.
Qin was succeeded by the Han Dynasty in 206 BC, which established the
province (zhou)
of Jingzhou in what is now Hubei
and Hunan. Near
the end of the
Han Dynasty in the
beginning of the 3rd century, Jingzhou was ruled by regional
warlord
Liu Biao.
After his death, Liu
Biao's realm was surrendered by his successors to Cao Cao, a powerful warlord who had conquered nearly
all of north China; but in the Battle of Red Cliffs
, warlords Liu Bei and
Sun Quan drove Cao Cao out of
Jingzhou. Liu Bei then took control of Jingzhou; he
went on to conquer Yizhou (the Sichuan Basin), but lost Jingzhou to Sun Quan; for the next few
decades Jingzhou was controlled by the Wu
Kingdom, ruled by Sun Quan and his successors.
The incursion of northern nomadic peoples into northern China at
the beginning of the 4th century began nearly three centuries of
the division of China into a nomad-ruled (but increasingly
Sinicized) north and a
Han Chinese-ruled
south. Hubei, which is in southern China, remained under southern
rule for this entire period, until the reunification of China by
the
Sui Dynasty in 589. In 617 the
Tang Dynasty replaced Sui, and later on
the Tang Dynasty placed what is now Hubei under several
circuits:
Jiangnanxi Circuit in the south;
Shannandong Circuit in the west, and
Huainan Circuit in the east. After
the
Tang Dynasty disintegrated the 10th
century, Hubei came under the control of several regional regimes:
Jingnan in the center,
Wu (later
Southern Tang) to the east, and the
Five Dynasties to the north.
The
Song Dynasty reunified China in 982
and placed most of Hubei into
Jinghubei Circuit, a longer version of
Hubei's current name.
Mongols conquered
China fully in 1279, and under their rule the province of Huguang was established, covering Hubei, Hunan, and parts
of Guangdong
and Guangxi. During
the Mongol rule, in 1334, Hubei was devastated by the world's first
recorded outbreak of the
Black Death,
which spread during the following three centuries to decimate
populations throughout Eurasia. (Citation needed, as most
authorities say Central Asia, some say India, and at least one says
Africa).
The
Ming
Dynasty
drove out the Mongols in 1368, and their version of
Huguang province was smaller, and corresponded almost entirely to
the modern provinces of Hubei and Hunan combined.
The
Manchu Qing Dynasty
which had conquered China in 1644 split Huguang
into the modern provinces of Hubei and Hunan in 1664.
The Qing
Dynasty continued to maintain a viceroy of
Huguang, however; one of the most famous was Zhang Zhidong, whose modernizing reforms made
Hubei (especially Wuhan) into a
prosperous center of commerce and industry. The Huangshi
/Daye area, south-east of Wuhan,
became an important center of mining and metallurgy.
In 1911
the Wuchang Uprising took place in
modern-day Wuhan,
overthrowing the Qing
Dynasty and establishing the Republic of China
. In 1927 Wuhan became the seat of a
government established by left-wing elements of the Kuomintang, led by Wang
Jingwei; this government was later merged into Chiang Kai-shek's government in Nanjing
. During World War
II the eastern parts of Hubei were conquered and occupied by
Japan
while the western parts remained under Chinese
control.
During the
Cultural Revolution
in the 1960s, Wuhan saw fighting between rival
Red Guard factions.
As the
fears of a nuclear war increased during the time of Sino-Soviet border conflicts in
the late 1969s, the Xianning
prefecture of Hubei was chosen as the site of
Project
131
, an underground military command
headquarters.
The province - and Wuhan in particular - suffered severely from the
1954 Yangtze River Floods.
Large
scale dam construction followed, with the Gezhouba Dam
on the Yangtze River near Yichang started in 1970 and completed in 1988; the
construction of the Three Gorges Dam, further upstream, began in 1993. In the
following years, authorities resettled millions of people from
western Hubei to make way for the construction of the dam. A number
of smaller dams have been constructed on the Yangtze's tributaries
as well.
Geography
The
Jianghan Plain takes up most of
central and eastern Hubei, while the west and the peripheries are
more mountainous, with ranges such as the
Wudang
Mountains
, the Jingshan
Mountains, the Daba Mountains,
and the Wushan Mountains (in rough
north-to-south order). The Dabie Mountains
lie to the northeast, on the border with Henan and Anhui; the
Tongbai Mountains lie to the north
on the border with Henan; to the
southeast the Mufu Mountains form the
border with Jiangxi.
The
eastern half of the Three
Gorges
(Xiling Gorge and part
of Wu Gorge) lies in western Hubei; the
other half is in neighbouring Chongqing. The highest peak in Hubei is
Shennong Peak, found in the
Daba Mountains and in the
forestry area of
Shennongjia; it has an altitude of 3105 m.
Boats on the Yangtze River, upstream
from the Three Gorges
The
Yangtze
River enters Hubei from the west via the Three Gorges; the Hanshui
and Shen Nong
Stream enter from the north. Shen Nong Stream is a tributary of the
Yangtze River which has also been degraded by the Three Gorges Dam
project. The Yangtze and Hanshui rivers meet at Wuhan, the
provincial capital.
Thousands of lakes dot the landscape, giving
Hubei the name of: "Province of Lakes"; the largest of these lakes
are Lake Liangzi and Lake Honghu
. The Danjiangkou Reservoir lies on the
border between Hubei and Henan.
Hubei has a
subtropical climate
with distinct seasons.
Hubei has average temperatures of 1 - 6
°C in winter and of 24 - 30 °C in summer; punishing temperatures of 40 °C or above are famously associated with Wuhan, the
provincial capital.
Important
cities are Wuhan, Jingmen
, Shiyan and Shashi.
Administrative divisions
Hubei is divided into thirteen
prefecture-level
divisions (of which there are twelve
prefecture-level cities and one
autonomous prefecture), as
well as three directly administered
county-level cities and one directly
administered county-level forestry area.
The three directly administered county-level cities are more
accurately described as
sub-prefecture-level cities:
The county-level forestry area:
The thirteen
prefecture-level
divisions and four directly administered
county-level
divisions of Hubei are subdivided into 102
county-level
divisions (38
district, 24
county-level cities, 37
counties, two
autonomous counties, one forestry area;
the directly administered county-level divisions are included
here). Those are in turn divided into 1234
township-level
divisions (737
town, 215
township, nine
ethnic townships, and 273
subdistricts).
See
List of administrative
divisions of Hubei for a complete list of
county-level
divisions.
Politics
Hubei Provincial offices of the
Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Public Security
Secretaries of the
CPC
Hubei Committee:
- Li Xiannian (李先念): 1949-1954
- Wang Renzhong (王任重):
1954-1966
- Zhang Tixue (张体学): 1966-1967
- Zeng Siyu (曾思玉): 1970-1973
- Zhao Xinchu (赵辛初): 1973-1978
- Chen Pixian (陈丕显): 1978-1982
- Guan Guangfu (关广富): 1983-1994
- Jia Zhijie (贾志杰): 1994-2001
- Jiang Zhusheng (蒋祝平): 2001
- Yu Zhengsheng (俞正声):
2001-2007
- Luo Qingquan (罗清泉): 2007
Governors of Hubei:
- Li Xiannian (李先念): 1949-1954
- Liu Zihou (刘子厚): 1954-1956
- Zhang Tixue (张体学): 1956-1967
- Zeng Siyu (曾思玉): 1968-1973
- Zhao Xinchu (赵辛初): 1973-1978
- Chen Pixian (陈丕显): 1978-1980
- Han Ningfu (韩宁夫): 1980-1982
- Huang Zhizhen (黄知真):
1982-1986
- Guo Zhenqian (郭振乾): 1986-1990
- Guo Shuyan (郭树言): 1990-1993
- Jia Zhijie (贾志杰): 1993-1995
- Jia Zhuping (蒋祝平): 1995-2001
- Zhang Guoguang (张国光):
2001-2002
- Luo Qingquan (罗清泉): 2002-2007
- Li Hongzhong (李鸿忠): 2007-incumbent
(acting)
Economy
Hubei is often called the "Land of Fish and Rice" ( ). Important
agricultural products in Hubei include
cotton,
rice,
wheat, and
tea, while industries
include
automobiles, metallurgy,
machinery, power generation, textiles, foodstuffs and high-tech
commodities.
Mineral resources that can be found in Hubei
in significant quantities include
borax,
hongshiite,
wollastonite,
garnet,
marlstone,
iron,
phosphorus,
copper,
gypsum,
rutile,
rock salt,
gold
amalgam,
manganese and
vanadium. The province's recoverable reserves of
coal stand at 548 million tons, which is modest
compared to other Chinese provinces. Hubei is also well known for
its mines of fine turquoise and green faustite.
Once
completed, the Three
Gorges Dam in western Hubei will provide plentiful hydroelectricity, with an estimated annual
power production of 84,700 Gwh. Existing
hydroelectric stations include Gezhouba,
Danjiangkou
, Geheyan, Hanjiang, Duhe, Huanglongtan, Bailianhe, Lushui and
Fushui.
Hubei's economy ranks 10th in the country and its nominal GDP for
2008 was 1.13 trillion yuan (163 billion USD) and a per capita of
19,884 RMB (2,863 USD).
Economic and Technological Development Zones
- Wuhan East Lake
New & Hi-Tech Park
- Wuhan Economic
& Technological Development Zone
- Wuhan Export
Processing Area
- Xiangfan
New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development
Zone
Demographics
Han Chinese form the dominant ethnic
group in Hubei.
A considerable Miao and Tujia population
live in the southwestern part of the province, especially in
Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous
Prefecture
.
On
October 18th, 2009, Chinese officials began to relocate 330,000
residents from the Hubei and Henan provinces
that will be effected by the Danjiangkou Reservoir on the Han
river
. The reservoir is part of the larger
South-North Water
Transfer Project.
Culture
Hubei Museum of Art
People in Hubei speak
Mandarin
dialects; most of these dialects are classified as
Southwestern Mandarin dialects, a
group that also encompasses the Mandarin dialects of most of
southwestern China.
Perhaps the most celebrated element of
Hubei cuisine is the
Wuchang fish, a freshwater
bream that is commonly steamed.
Types of traditional
Chinese opera
popular in Hubei include
Hanju and
Chuju.
The
Shennongjia area is the alleged home
of the
Yeren, a wild undiscovered
hominid that lives in the forested
hills.
The people of Hubei are given the uncomplimentary nickname
"
Nine Headed Birds" by other
Chinese, from a
mythological
creature said to be very aggressive and hard to kill.
"In the
sky live nine-headed birds. On the earth live wise Hubei
people." (天上九头鸟，地上湖北佬)
Wuhan is one of
the major culture centers in China.
Education
The
premier Wuhan
University
(founded in 1893) and many other institutions in
Wuhan makes it a hub of higher education and research in
China.
Universities
Huazhong University of Science and
Technology
Transportation
Hubei plays an important role in China's transportation industry.
Situated
on the Yangtze and Hanshui
Rivers, which are important waterways, Hubei also
enjoys the convenience of railways linking Beijing to Guangzhou
, Beijing to Kowloon
, Shanghai to Wuhan, Wuhan
to Chengdu
, and Zhicheng to Liuzhou
, and of the airports in Wuhan, Yichang, Sanxia,
Xiangfan and Shashi. National and provincial highways also
contribute to Hubei's economic development.
Tourism
Hubei is home to the ancient
state of
Chu, a local state during the
Eastern Zhou Dynasty that developed its
own unique culture. Chu culture mixed with other influences,
ancient and modern, endows Hubei richly with tourist resources.
Famous attractions include:
In 1994,
the ancient building complex of the Wudang Mountains was listed by
UNESCO
as a
World Heritage
Site.
The
province also has historical sites connected with China's more
recent history, such as the Wuchang
Uprising Memorial in Wuhan, Project 131 site (a Cultural-Revolution-era underground
military command center) in Xianning, and the National Mining Park (国家矿山公园) in Huangshi.
Numerous
tourist boats (as well as regular passenger boats) travel up the
Yangtze from Yichang through the Three Gorges area and into the neighboring Chongqing municipality.
The mountains of western Hubei, in particular in
Shennongjia District, offer a welcome respite
from Wuhan's and Yichang's summer heat.
The tourist
facilities in that area concentrate around Muyu
in the
southern part of Shennongjia, the gateway to Shennongjia National
Nature Reserve (神农架国家自然保护区).
Sport
A university stadium in Wuhan
Professional sports teams in Hubei include:
Twinning
In 2005,
Hubei province signed a twinning agreement with Telemark
county of Norway. A "Norway-Hubei Week" was
held in 2007.
See also
Notes
External links
in Wuhan
in Wuhan, with extensive archeological and cultural
exhibits and performance presentations of ancient music and
dance.
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search
