1.
Hubei
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Hubei is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the Central China region. The name of the province north of the lake, referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The provincial capital is Wuhan, a major thoroughfare and the political, cultural. It borders Henan to the north, Anhui to the east, Jiangxi to the southeast, Hunan to the south, Chongqing to the west, the high-profile Three Gorges Dam is located at Yichang, in the west of the province. The Hubei region was home to sophisticated Neolithic cultures, by the Spring and Autumn period, the territory of todays Hubei was part of the powerful State of Chu. During the Warring States period Chu became the major adversary of the upstart State of Qin to the northwest, 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 its heartland, which correspond to modern Hubei. In 223 BC Qin chased down the remnants of the Chu regime, Qin founded the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, the first unified state in the region. Qin was succeeded by the Han dynasty in 206 BC, which established the province of Jingzhou in what is now Hubei, the Qin and Han played an active role in the agricultural colonization of Hubei, maintaining a system of river dikes to protect farmland from summer floods. Towards the end of the Han Dynasty in the beginning of the 3rd century, the incursion of northern nomadic peoples into the region at the beginning of the 4th century began nearly three centuries of division into a nomad-ruled north and a Han Chinese-ruled south. Hubei, to the South, remained under southern rule for this entire period, until the unification of China by the Sui dynasty in 589. After the Tang dynasty disintegrated in the 10th century, Hubei came under the control of several regional regimes, Jingnan in the center, Wu to the east, and the Five Dynasties to the north. The Song dynasty reunified the region in 982 and placed most of Hubei into Jinghubei Circuit, Mongols conquered the region in 1279, and under their rule the province of Huguang was established, covering Hubei, Hunan, and parts of Guangdong and Guangxi. 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. While Hubei was geographically removed from the centers of the Ming power, during the last years of the Ming, todays Hubei was ravaged several times by the rebel armies of Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng. The Manchu Qing dynasty which had much of the region in 1644, soon split Huguang into the provinces of Hubei. The Huangshi/Daye area, south-east of Wuhan, became an important center of mining, 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, during World War II the eastern parts of Hubei were conquered and occupied by Japan while the western parts remained under Chinese control
2.
Yichang
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Yichang is a prefecture-level city located in western Hubei province, China. It is the second largest city in the province after the capital, the Three Gorges Dam is located within its administrative area, in Yiling District. In ancient times Yichang was known as Yiling, There are historical records telling that in the year 278 BC during the Warring States period, the Qin general Bai Qi set fire to Yiling. In 222 AD Yichang was also the site of the Battle of Yiling during the Three Kingdoms Period, the imperial government set up a navigation company there and built wharfs less than 0.5 kilometres in length. Since 1949, more than 50 wharves have been constructed at the port so that its area is now over 15 kilometres long. In 1940, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Battle of Zaoyang-Yichang took place in the area, administratively, it is a prefecture-level city, its municipal government has jurisdiction over five counties, five urban districts, and three satellite county-level cities. It covers 21,084 square kilometres in Western Hubei Province, the Xiling Gorge, the easternmost of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze, is located within the prefecture-level city. Within the prefecture-level city of Yichang, the Yangtze is joined by a number of tributaries, including the Qing River, Xiang Xi, the central urban area of Yichang is split between several districts. On the right bank of the Yangtze are located Xiling District, Yiling District, the city area on the opposite bank of the river is included into Dianjun District. All these districts, with the exception of the central Xiling, Yichang has a four-season, monsoon-influenced, humid subtropical climate, with cool, damp and generally overcast winters, and hot, humid summers. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from 4.9 °C in January to 27.7 °C in July, close to 70% of the annual precipitation of 1,140 mm occurs from May to September. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 24% in January to 49% in August, the city receives 1,568 hours of sunshine annually. Yichang Sanxia Airport is located in the Xiaoting District of Yichang City,26 km away from the city center and 55 km from the Three Gorges Dam site. The airport is located, which borders Yihuang Highway in the north, Long River Golden Waterway in the south. It connects the urban Xiling and Dianjun Districts, There are several ferry crossings as well. Yichang is an important river port on the Yangtze river, maoping Town, has an active passenger wharf as well. The Qing River in the part of the prefecture, with its cascade of dams, is an important waterway as well. Yichang is served by railway lines
3.
Badong County
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Badong County is a county located in the extreme west of Hubei province, Peoples Republic of China. It is under the administration of Enshi Prefecture, the Yangtze River flows through the county and the county seat is located just east of the Wu Gorge in the Three Gorges region. Badong County is famous for the Shen Nong Stream gorges located near Badong town, the stream itself falls into the Yangtze opposite the Badong center city. The Badong county seat, commonly referred to simply as Badong, is in the town of Xinling, dito nakasira si badong Other name Coal mining in small pits is the main commercial activity in the region, along with farming. There is also a cement factory on the river to the east of the town. The rural population of Badong County, as many other parts of inland China, has seen major changes in the past two decades. The new freedom to travel and work in parts of China has also led to a major exodus of workers to the coastal areas of China to find work. The older people tend to stay in the villages, and the workers return to have their children. The overall result is that many villages in Badong are shrinking, Badong County is divided into 10 towns and 2 townships. They two sides of the Yangtze are connected by the Badong Bridge, due to the difficult terrain and the road conditions, the most convenient way to reach Badongs county seat is with a Yangtze riverboat. Both regular boats and hydrofoils call in the busy Badong harbor on the way up, the county has one Yangtze crossing, the Badong Bridge, carrying China National Highway 209. The highway crosses the northern half of the county from the northeast to the southwest, as of 2009, Highway 209 was little more than a dirt road for a 20-km stretch north of the bridge. China National Highway 318 crosses the southern part of the county from the east to the west, the new G50 Shanghai–Chongqing Expressway and Yichang-Wanzhou Railway have been recently completed along the same corridor as well. The Siduhe Bridge on the new highway, located near Yesanguan town, is one of the longest bridges of its kinds, the Badong Station on the new railway, located near Yesanguan Town in the south-central part of the county, is the only railway station within the county. At the planning station it was known as Yesanguan Station, due to its location, a number of provincial highways run north to south through the county. Deng Yujiao incident, occurred in Badong in 2009 Ran Jianxin incident, occurred in Lichuan and Badong in May, gnodab, the opposite of Badong Official website of Badong County Government
4.
Shennongjia
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Shennongjia Forestry District is a county-level administrative unit in northwestern Hubei province, Peoples Republic of China, directly subordinated to the provincial government. The population is predominantly Han Chinese, the remaining 5% being mostly Tujia, however, this arrangement is not unique to Shennongjia, as Hubei also has three county-level cities which are directly under the provincial government, without being part of a prefecture-level unit. The district was created in 1970 from the adjacent areas of Badong County, Xingshan County, Shennongjia is further divided into 5 towns,2 townships, and 1 ethnic township. The county seat is in Songbai Town in the northern of the district, there are numerous tourist attractions throughout the district, but, as of 2009, most of the district is closed to foreign tourists, with the exception of a narrow strip along its southern border. The open area includes the Shennongjia National Nature Reserve, Shennongjia Forestry District is named after the Shennongjia mountainous massif, which is usually considered to be the eastern section of the Daba Mountains. It lies within the Daba Mountains evergreen forests ecoregion, some of Hubeis highest mountains - which are also the highest mountains of the Daba Shan - are located within the district. The three tallest peaks, located west of Muyu town, are Shennong Deng, Da Shennongjia, laojun Shan,2,936 metres tall, is located northeast of Muyu. The reserve includes 2,618 square kilometres of forest, and, one survey by Chinese botanists reports 3,479 higher plant species found in a certain area. The protected animal species include golden snub-nosed monkey, whose population in the district was reported to have grown between 1990 and 2005 from 500 to over 1200, a specially protected 100-square-km area is designated for this endangered primate species. Shennongjia has sites of interests to paleontologists as well. The Rhino Cave in Hongping Town has been described by Chinese paleontologists as the richest fossil site in the country after Zhoukoudian, the district is mountainous and heavily forested, which, historically, made forestry the main industry. Over 100,000 cubic meters of timber was produced in the district annually from the 1960s to 1980s, officially, felling of natural forest completely ceased in March 2000. There are mining operations throughout the district, as elsewhere in the mountainous western Hubei, numerous small hydroelectric plants utilize the energy of Shennongjias rivers and streams. Numerous tourist facilities operate along the China National Highway 209, in particular in, on average, the area remains comparatively poor, with the GDP per capita lower than any of Hubeis prefecture-level units. The main north-south route throughout the district is China National Highway 209, in practice most visitors enter the district from its southern border, traveling along a provincial highway from Yichang, which merges with G209 near Gaoyang in Xingshan County. This route is a paved road, designated as the Yi-Shen Route. Hubei Provincial Route 307 runs through the part of the district, from G209 east to Songbai Town. Due to the terrain, the district has no rail or water transport
5.
Yangtze
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The Yangtze River, known in China as the Cháng Jiāng or the Yángzǐ Jiāng, is the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world. The river is the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country and it drains one-fifth of the land area of the Peoples Republic of China and its river basin is home to one-third of the countrys population. The Yangtze is the sixth-largest river by volume in the world. The Yangtze River plays a role in the history, culture. The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as 20% of the PRCs GDP, for thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world, in recent years, the river has suffered from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes, which exacerbates seasonal flooding. Some sections of the river are now protected as nature reserves, a stretch of the upstream Yangtze flowing through deep gorges in western Yunnan is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In mid-2014 the Chinese government announced it was building a transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports. Because the source of the Yangtze was not ascertained until modern times, Yangtze was actually the name of Chang Jiang for the lower part from Nanjing to the river mouth at Shanghai. In modern Chinese, Yangtze is still used to refer to the part of Chang Jiang from Nanjing to the river mouth. Yangtze never stands for the whole Chang Jiang, Chang Jiang is the modern Chinese name for the lower 2,884 km of the Yangtze from its confluence with the Min River at Yibin in Sichuan Province to the river mouth at Shanghai. Chang Jiang literally means the Long River, in Old Chinese, this stretch of the Yangtze was simply called Jiang/Kiang 江, a character of phono-semantic compound origin, combining the water radical 氵 with the homophone 工. Krong was probably a word in the Austroasiatic language of local peoples such as the Yue, similar to *krong in Proto-Vietnamese and krung in Mon, all meaning river, it is related to modern Vietnamese sông and Khmer kôngkea. By the Han Dynasty, Jiang had come to any river in Chinese. The epithet 長, means long, was first formally applied to the river during the Six Dynasties period, various sections of Chang Jiang have local names. From Yibin to Yichang, the river through Sichuan and Chongqing Municipality is also known as the Chuan Jiang or Sichuan River, in the Hubei Province, the river is also called the Jing Jiang or the Jing River after Jingzhou. In Anhui Province, the takes on the local name Wan Jiang after the shorthand name for Anhui. And Yangzi Jiang t 揚子江s 扬子江, p Yángzǐjiāng) or the Yangzi River, the name likely comes from an ancient ferry crossing called Yangzi or Yangzijin
6.
Three Gorges Dam
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The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, China. The Three Gorges Dam is the worlds largest power station in terms of installed capacity, in 2014 the dam generated 98.8 terawatt-hours and had the world record, but was surpassed by Itaipú Dam that set the new world record in 2016 producing 103.1 TWh. Except for the locks, the dam project was completed and fully functional as of July 4,2012, the ship lift was complete in December 2015. Each main water turbine has a capacity of 700 MW, the dam body was completed in 2006. Coupling the dams 32 main turbines with two generators to power the plant itself, the total electric generating capacity of the dam is 22,500 MW. As well as producing electricity, the dam is intended to increase the Yangtze Rivers shipping capacity, China regards the project as monumental as well as a success socially and economically, with the design of state-of-the-art large turbines, and a move toward limiting greenhouse gas emissions. However, the dam flooded archaeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people, the dam has been controversial both domestically and abroad. A large dam across the Yangtze River was originally envisioned by Sun Yat-sen in The International Development of China and he stated that a dam capable of generating 30 million horsepower was possible downstream of the Three Gorges. In 1932, the Nationalist government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, in 1939, Japanese military forces occupied Yichang and surveyed the area. A design, the Otani plan, was completed for the dam in anticipation of a Japanese victory over China. In 1944, the United States Bureau of Reclamation chief design engineer, John L. Savage, surveyed the area, Some 54 Chinese engineers went to the U. S. for training. In the case of water craft, groups of craft would be lifted together for efficiency. Some exploration, survey, economic study, and design work was done, after the 1954 Yangtze River Floods, in 1956, Mao Zedong authored Swimming, a poem about his fascination with a dam on the Yangtze River. In 1958, after the Hundred Flowers Campaign, some engineers who spoke out against the project were imprisoned, during the 1980s, the idea of a dam reemerged. The National Peoples Congress approved the dam in 1992, out of 2,633 delegates,1,767 voted in favour,177 voted against,664 abstained, Construction started on December 14,1994. The dam was expected to be operational in 2009, but additional projects, such as the underground power plant with six additional generators. The ship lift was completed in 2015, the dam had raised the water level in the reservoir to 172.5 m above sea level by the end of 2008 and the designed maximum level of 175 m by October 2010. Made of concrete and steel, the dam is 2,335 m long, the project used 27. 2×10^6 m3 of concrete, used 463,000 T of steel, and moved about 102. 6×10^6 m3 of earth
7.
Daye
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Daye is a city of eastern Hubei province, Peoples Republic of China. Administratively, it is a city of Huangshi City. Before the adoption of the Hanyu Pinyin, the name of the city was often transcribed in English as Tayeh. As it is usually the case with county-level cities, Daye includes both a core and a fair amount of rural land in all directions, with smaller townships such as Dajipu. According to the Fifth Population Census of China, the entire city of Daye had 813,600 residents. The Daye Lake south of Dayes urban core is surrounded by parks and fishing ponds, for a traveler who goes on G316 from Wuhan toward the south-east, Daye appears as a border between the more urban and more rural parts of the province. Daye sits on the border of the heavily industrialized Wuhan/Ezhou/Huangshi metropolitan area, south of it. Daye is a city, a center of mining and metallurgy. According to archaeologists, copper mining and smelting was conducted at Dayes Tonglüshan Mine as early as the Spring and Autumn period, Tonglüshan Mine is located just southwest of the modern city, and now has a museum. Among the major employers is Huangshi Daye Non-ferrous Metals Co. Ltd, Daye was the junction of the Wuhan-Daye Railway and Daye-Shahejie Railway, which merged in 1989 to form the Wuhan–Jiujiang Railway. Huangshi Railway Station, which is the passenger station for the entire Huangshi metropolitan area, is located within Dayes administrative borders. It has fairly frequent service, with time to Wuhan being typically around 1 hour on a high-speed D-series train. Daye is served by the Wuhan–Huangshi Intercity Railway, part of the future Wuhan Metropolitan Area Intercity Railway, the new Daye North Railway Station, located north-east of Dayes main urban area, serves as that lines terminal. It has fairly frequent service to the Wuhan Railway Station, construction work is carried out to extent this rail line beyond Daye, this will become the Wuhan–Jiujiang Passenger Railway. Daye is also served by the China National Highway 106, Daye County existed on and off for centuries, as recently as the World War II period, it included much of todays prefecture-level city of Huangshi. This means that pre-1949 references to a location in Daye or Tayeh may refer to anywhere within todays Huangshi, Daye County was re-established on June 1,1962, on a rather smaller scale, as part of Huangshi City. On February 18,1994 Daye was converted into a county-level city, the speech of Daye and the adjacent counties farther south has been traditionally characterized as the Daye dialect, part of the Datong dialect group of Gan Chinese
8.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
9.
Wuhan
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Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, China, and is the most populous city in Central China. It lies in the eastern Jianghan Plain at the intersection of the reaches of the Yangtze. Because of its key role in transportation, Wuhan was sometimes referred to as the Chicago of China by foreign sources. Holding sub-provincial status, Wuhan is recognized as the political, economic, financial, cultural, educational, the city of Wuhan, first termed as such in 1927, has a population of 10,607,700 people as of 2015. In the 1920s, Wuhan was the capital of a leftist Kuomintang government led by Wang Jingwei in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek. At the 2010 census, its built-up area made of 8 out of 10 urban districts was home to 8,821,658 inhabitants, with a 3, 500-year-long history, Wuhan is one of the most ancient and civilized metropolitan cities in China. During the Han dynasty, Hanyang became a busy port. Around that time, walls were built to protect Hanyang and Wuchang, the latter event marks the foundation of Wuhan. In AD223, the Yellow Crane Tower was constructed on the Wuchang side of the Yangtze River, cui Hao, a celebrated poet of the Tang dynasty, visited the building in the early 8th century, his poem made it the most celebrated building in southern China. The city has long been renowned as a center for the arts, under the Mongol rulers, Wuchang was promoted to the status of provincial capital, by the dawn of the 18th century, Hankou had become one of Chinas top four most important towns of trade. In the late 19th century, railroads were extended on an axis through the city. Also during this period foreign powers extracted mercantile concessions, with the riverfront of Hankou being divided up into foreign-controlled merchant districts and these districts contained trading firm offices, warehouses, and docking facilities. On October 10,1911, Sun Yat-sens followers launched the Wuchang Uprising, Wuhan was the capital of a leftist Kuomintang government led by Wang Jingwei, in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek during the 1920s. S. As the battle raged on through 1938, Wuhan and the region had become the site of the Battle of Wuhan. After being taken by the Japanese in late 1938, Wuhan became a major Japanese logistics center for operations in southern China, in December 1944, the city was largely destroyed by U. S. firebombing raids conducted by the Fourteenth Air Force. In 1967, civil strife struck the city in the Wuhan Incident as a result of tensions arising out of the Cultural Revolution. The city has been subject to devastating floods, which are now supposed to be controlled by the ambitious Three Gorges Dam, a project which was completed in 2008. In December 1858, James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, High Commissioner to China, and in the spring of 1861, Counselor Harry Parkes and Admiral Herbert were sent to Wuhan to open a trading port
10.
Huangshi
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Huangshi is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Hubei province, Peoples Republic of China. Its population was 2,429,318 inhabitants at the 2010 census,1,601,687 of whom lived in the area made up of 4 urban districts plus the city of Daye. Huangshi is located in southeastern Hubei province, along the bank of one of the major bends in the Yangtze River. It is located 100 kilometres south-east of Wuhan, and borders Jiangxi province to the south and its area was reported by the local government as 4,583 square kilometres, elsewhere, the number of 4,630 square kilometres was given. The terrain is mostly small mountains and hills, the tallest mountain is 7 Summit Mountain with an elevation of 860 metres above sea level. Huangshi is also located in a lake district between Hunans Dongting Lake and Jiangxis Poyang lake and has dozens of large lakes. Average annual temperature is 17 °C and precipitation is 1,400 mm, there are 264 frost free days. It snows between December and February, Huangshi has 4 districts,1 county, and 1 county-level city. More than 99% of the population belong to the Han ethnic group, according to Google Map there are 686.894 people in Huangshi, this refers, presumably, to Huangshis urban core, and excludes the far-flung Yangxin County, Daye, and Tieshan. Huangshis GDP for 2003 was 27.5 billion CNY and its proximity to Wuhan and location along major rail lines and the Yangtze River make Huangshi an important logistics, distribution, and transportation hub. Mineral resources are plentiful in Huangshi giving it the nickname The Southern Cornucopia, metals include iron, manganese, gold, copper, tungsten, molybdenum, zinc, lead, cobalt, silver, gallium, and thallium. Other mineral resources include germanium, indium, selenium, tellurium, sulfur, calcite, limestone, celestine, plaster, agriculture is also a major part of Huangshis economy. There are more than 3000 species of plants in Huangshi, many of them used for food, pharmaceuticals, other industries include metallurgy, textiles, construction materials, energy, light manufacturing, electronics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food processing. The prefecture-level city is served by G45 Daqing–Guangzhou Expressway, G50 Shanghai–Chongqing Expressway, National Highways 106 and 316, the city has two Yangtze River crossings, the Huangshi Yangtze River Bridge and the Edong Yangtze River Bridge. Many of the trains traveling on the Wuhan–Jiujiang Railway between Wuhan and the points southeast make stops at the Huangshi and Yangxin stations. The Huangshi Station is located within the borders of Daye County-level city. The Yangxin Station is near Yangxin Countys county seat, Xingguo Town, although Huangshis main urban area is some distance away from the Wuhan–Jiujiang Railway mainline, it is connected to it by a dead-end branch, of considerable importance for the local industries. It runs all the way to Huangshis river port on the Yangtze, there was even a downtown passenger station on this branch, but, as of 2012, it was served by very few trains, and by 2015, was not in operation anymore
11.
Wuchang District
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Wuchang District forms part of the urban core of and is one of 13 districts of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, China. It was one of three cities that merged into modern-day Wuhan, and stood on the bank of the Yangtze River. The two other cities, Hanyang and Hankou, were on the left bank, separated from each other by the Han. The name Wuchang remains in use for the part of urban Wuhan south of the Yangtze River. Administratively, however, it is split between districts of the City of Wuhan. The historic center of Wuchang lies within the modern Wuchang District, which has an area of 82.4 square kilometres, other parts of whats colloquially known as Wuchang are within Hongshan District and Qingshan District. Presently, on the bank of the Yangtze, it borders the districts of Qingshan to the northeast and Hongshan to the east and south, on the opposite bank it borders Jiangan, Jianghan. The Wuchang fish is named after the town, in 221, warlord Sun Quan moved the capital of Eastern Wu from Gongan county, Jingzhou to È county, and renamed È to Wuchang. Later in the year Cao Pi proclaimed himself the emperor of Cao Wei, Sun Quan declared independence in the following year, and started to build forts and palaces in Wuchang. Sun Quan proclaimed himself the emperor of Eastern Wu in 229, Sun Hao, the emperor of Eastern Wu between 264 and 280, moved the capital back to Wuchang in 265. In 589, the Wuchang commandery was abolished and the Wuchang county was transferred to a new commandery named Ezhou, the Wuchang commandery was set up when È was renamed to Wuchang, and included six counties. In 223 the commandery was renamed to Jiangxia, and the capital of the moved to Xiakou. The name of the town was switched back and forth between Wuchang and Jiangxia several times in the following centuries, after 1301, the Wuchang prefecture, headquartered in the town, became the capital of Hubei province. At the end of the Qing Empire, the Wuchang Prefecture was the capital of the provinces of Hubei and Hunan. It was the seat of the government of Huguang, at the head of which was a viceroy of Huguang. Next to Nanjing and Guangzhou, it was one of the most important vice-royalties in the empire and it possessed an arsenal and a mint. The provincial government established ironworks for the manufacture of rails and other railway material, as the works did not pay under official management, they were transferred to the director-general of railways. Wuchang was not open to trade and residence, but a considerable number of missionaries
12.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
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