china-10-hubei_v1_m56577569830510983.pdfVIP

© Lonely Planet Publications 473 H Ú B Húb ěi 湖北 Ě I Lying at China’s geographical heart and ringed by five provinces and the municipality of Chóngqìng, Húběi has long been famed for its vital strategic significance. The province is inundated with water and lushly fertile, its landlocked panoramas flushed by the mighty Yangzi River (Cháng Jiāng) and its tributaries, which cleave the province into a mosaic of lakes, waterways and irrigated fields. The flood-prone Yangzi has delivered periodic devastation but it has also ensured a pros- perous trade route, while gouging out the scenic phenomenon of the Three Gorges. Gob- smacked tourists still funnel through Yíchāng for once-in-a-lifetime glimpses of these chasms, now visibly reduced by rising waters amassing behind the Three Gorges Dam. The Yangzi is the powerhouse behind the astonishing hydroelectric potential of the dam – Húběi’s most controversial c