North of Dongting Lake, Chu once faced Qin's rising armies
Hubei means north of the lake—Dongting—and ranks among China's larger inland economies with Wuhan as hub. Western Zhou's state of E lends historical resonance; Spring and Autumn Chu power later filled today's provincial map before Warring States clashes with expansionist Qin.
Hubei means north of the lake, the lake being Dongting, and borders Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Chongqing and Shaanxi. Most of the centre and south is the Jianghan Plain, named for the Yangtze and its tributary the Han, and dotted with thousands of lakes, Liangzi and Hong the largest, that earn it the nickname Province of Lakes. Mountains such as the Wudang, Daba and Dabie ranges ring the edges, and the Yangtze enters from the west through the Three Gorges.
The region lay within the powerful state of Chu in the Spring and Autumn period. Warring with Qin, Chu lost the Sichuan Basin and then, in 278 BC, its heartland. The Han created Jingzhou province and kept dikes against summer floods; the Song placed most of the area in Jinghubei Circuit, and under the Mongols and Ming it belonged to Huguang, together with Hunan.
The Wuchang Uprising in today's Wuhan in 1911 set off the revolution that ended the Qing, and in 1927 Wuhan hosted Wang Jingwei's left-wing Kuomintang government. Rival Red Guard factions fought in the Wuhan Incident of July 1967, and fear of nuclear war put an underground command centre, Project 131, in Xianning. After the 1954 Yangtze floods came the Gezhouba Dam, built from 1970 to 1988, and the Three Gorges Dam at Yichang, begun in 1993, which displaced millions.
The first COVID-19 case was identified in Wuhan on 1 December 2019, and sweeping quarantines followed. Summers are hot and humid, with July averages of 24 to 30 °C. Called the Land of Fish and Rice, Hubei grows cotton, rice, wheat and tea, builds cars in Shiyan and elsewhere, and has China's seventh-largest provincial economy.
Source: Hubei
