Hanchuan

Hanchuan is a county-level city under Xiaogan in east-central Hubei, its urban area on the left bank of the Han River a few tens of kilometres upstream from Wuhan, and it takes its name from the river that crosses its whole territory. It covers 1,663 square kilometres and counts 900,000 people, and the Chinese call it the land of fish and rice and the pearl of the Jianghan plain. The county was first established in 561 as Zhengshan and was renamed Hanchuan in 977; in March 1997 the State Council approved the abolition of the county and the creation of the county-level city. The ground is flat and low, about 96.4 per cent of the land area at around 25 metres above sea level.