Wuhan

Introduction

PLA soldiers in Wuhan

© All Rights Reserved Griffster

Wuhan is the capital and largest city in the Chinese province of Hubei and has about 7 million inhabitants in the city, well over 10 million in the metropolitan area.

Weather

Wuhan has a subtropical humid type of weather, and is considered one of the three furnaces in China, the others being Chongqing and Nanjing. Temperatures in summer can reach 40 °C with high humidity, resulting in unbearable conditions: a time to avoid a visit! Average highs are around 30-32 °C from June to mid-September with nights well above 20 °C, sometimes not even dropping below 28 °C! Winters are drap, with often overcast conditions and temperatures around 10 °C during the day and just above zero at night. It's the driest time of the year though with around 25 mm of rain in December, compared to 225 mm in June! Weatherwise, April/early May and October are the best months for a visit.

Getting There

By Plane

Wuhan Tianhe International Airport (WUH) is the main gateway to Wuhan and all of Hubei. It's one of the fastest growing airports in the country and handles a growing number of international flights as well as domestic flights to nearly all major Chinese cities.

By Train

Wuhan has 3 stations: the Hankou, Wuhan and Wuchang Stations.
Wuhan is a major city connected by new high-speed trains. The Hefei-Wuhan high-speed railway was opened in April 2009 there are high-speend trains to/from Hefei, Nanjing, and Shanghai (6 hours). Most of these express trains leave from the Hankou Railway Station.
The new Wuhan Railway Station opened in December 2009 and China had its second high-speed train with scheduled runs from Guangzhou to Wuhan. It is considered one of the fastest trains in the world, with a topspeed of 394 km/h. The travel time between the two cities has been reduced from 10.5 hours to just 3 hours! Eventually, the rail service will extend north to Beijing.

Getting Around

By Public Transport

The Wuhan Metro opened in 2004 and became the 5th one in the country after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Tianjin. It's about 10 kilometres long, but the second phase is planned to be completed in 2010, which will extend the lenght to almost 30 kilometres. Currently, it runs from Huangpu to Zongguan in the downtown area of the Hankou District.

Sleep

Keep Connected

Phone

See also International Telephone Calls

Post

China Post (中国邮政) is the official postal service of the People's Republic of China, operated by the State Postal Bureau of the People's Republic of China (website in Chinese only), and has more details about price to send letters, postcards and parcels, both domestically as well as internationally. The Chinese postal service is very good. Remember that in more remote places usually only one post office in a city can handle sending international boxes or letters. Also many times it might be worth having the name of the country you are trying to send to in Chinese characters. Post offices have a striking green logo and can easily be found everywhere in the cities. They are mostly open every day (including weekends!) from 8:00am to 6:00pm, though small offices might have shorter opening times, while the bigger ones in central and touristic areas are sometimes open during evenings as well.

External Links

• Official Governmental Website