China Guide
The Yangzi basin
Hankou
Bursting with traffic and crowds, Hankou is a place to walk, shop, eat, spend money and watch modern Chinese doing the same. The main thoroughfare is Zhongshan Dadao, a packed, three-kilometre-long stretch of restaurants, stores and shopping plazas. Surprisingly, given the city's turbulent history, Hankou's colonial quarter survives almost in its entirety, restored during a big clean-up project in 2001. Aside from the racetrack, now watery Zhongshan Park near the corner of Jiefang Dadao and Qingnian Lu, the colonial core lies mostly between the eastern half of Zhongshan Dadao and the river. The best sections are along the former Bund, renamed Yanjiang Dadao, and Jianghan Lu. The two roads converge at the mighty Customs House, a solid Renaissance edifice with imposing grey-stone portico and Corinthian capitals. The Bund itself is still visible; in 1954, the Communists erected a Flood Control Monument, a tall obelisk embellished with Mao's portrait, in Binjiang Park. Many buildings in the area have plaques in English outlining their history; some to look for include the unusual seven-storey Art Deco/modernist exterior of the former Siming Bank at 45 Jianghan Lu, and the brick "Wuhan Talent Market" on Yanjiang Dadao – once the US Consulate. The Bank of China, at the intersection of Jianghan Lu and Zhongshan Dadao, retains its period interior of wooden panelling and chandeliers, while Hankou's old train station on Chezhan Lu sports a derelict French Gothic shell surrounded by a mass of seedy shops and stalls.
If you're up near Hankou's train station, drop in to the Wuhan Museum (daily 9am–5pm; ¥20), which houses an outstanding collection of antique bronzes, porcelain, jade and scrolls of painting and calligraphy. In particular, there's a wonderful Ming-dynasty painting of the Yueyang Tower in Hunan, with a view of gnarled pines and boats riding a turbulent Yangzi; and a 1700-year-old, fifteen-centimetre-wide bronze mirror decorated with scenes from the Han-dynasty collection of Chinese mythology, the Book of Songs.