Wuhan
— — a city of bridges where two great rivers meet.
Not only on a wall.
“Wuhan is three old cities folded into one, on either side of the place where the Han River empties into the Yangtze. From the bluff on the south bank the Yellow Crane Tower has been rebuilt many times since the third century, the latest version standing nine stories above the river. East Lake spreads behind the city, larger than West Lake in Hangzhou and quieter than its reputation. The Yangtze is wide here and busy with barges; the long road bridge crossing it, opened in 1957, was the first to span the river. The plum trees bloom in late February.
Wuhan, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Wuhan is the capital of Hubei Province and the largest city in central China, with a metropolitan population of around 11 million. It sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Han River, which divides the city into three traditional sub-cities: Wuchang on the south bank, Hankou on the north bank west of the Han, and Hanyang on the north bank east of the Han. The three were administratively unified in 1927. Wuhan is a major rail and river-transport hub for the country, with a long history as a treaty port and as a centre of iron, steel, and university education.
The Yellow Crane Tower stands on Snake Hill on the south bank of the Yangtze in Wuchang. The original was raised in 223 CE during the Three Kingdoms period as a military watchtower and rebuilt many times since; the present nine-story version, completed in 1985, is set back from the original site to make room for the bridge approach. The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge opened in 1957 as the first road-and-rail bridge to cross the Yangtze, a two-deck steel truss roughly 1,670 metres long. The tower above and the bridge below now read as a single composition from the river.
Wuhan's climate is humid subtropical, with hot wet summers and cool damp winters, and the city is one of the so-called Three Furnaces of the Yangtze for its July and August heat. Plum trees begin to bloom in late February in East Lake Plum Garden, which holds one of the largest plum collections in China at more than 20,000 trees across 320 cultivars. Lotus comes into flower on East Lake in June and July. The Yangtze runs high in summer with the meltwater and monsoon, and the river-front promenades read very differently in flood season than in winter low water.