As the capital of Hubei province and the largest metropolis of middle China, Wuhan city houses around 8.97 million people. The Yangtze River and its longest branch river Han River passes through the downtown, separating the city into Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang. So Wuhan is considered as the “River City” since the ancient time.

    The area was first settled more than 3,000 years ago. During the Han Dynasty , Hanyang became a fairly busy port. In the 3rd century AD one of the most famous battles in Chinese history  and a central event in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms -the Battle of Red Cliffs -took place in the vicinity of the cliffs near Wuhan. Around that time, walls were built to protect Hanyang (AD 206) and Wuchang (AD 223). The latter event marks the foundation of Wuhan. In AD 223, the Yellow Crane Tower   was constructed on the Wuchang side of the Yangtze River. Cui Hao , a celebrated poet of Tang Dynasty , visited the building in the early 8th century; his poem made the building the most celebrated building in southern China. The city has long been renowned as a center for the arts (especially poetry) and for intellectual studies.

    In the late 19th century, similar to Shanghai, foreign powers extracted mercantile concessions, with the riverfront of Hankou being divided up into various foreign controlled merchant districts. These districts contained trading firm offices, warehouses, and docking facilities. This history makes Wuhan with colonial city features.

    The city has been subject to numerous devastating floods, which are supposed to be controlled by the ambitious Three Gorges Dam , a project which was completed in 2008.