“Wuhan’s direct entanglement with the world beyond Hubei province’s borders is nothing new. Caravans took tea overland to Russia.”
An account of Wuhan-in-the-world and its colonial history from the nineteenth onwards, by Robert Bickers robertbickers.net/2020/02/03/wuh…
An account of Wuhan-in-the-world and its colonial history from the nineteenth onwards, by Robert Bickers robertbickers.net/2020/02/03/wuh…
My stepfather grew up in the French concession in the cosmopolitan port city of Hankow 漢口. His father and grandfather were both engineers, and the Chow family played a critical role in the construction of the Beijing-Hankow Railway.
[19thc British map of trading routes]
[19thc British map of trading routes]
As a result of growing up in Hankou in Wuhan, LY Chow became deeply enmeshed with and fascinated by the larger world — before he went to study international relations and political science at Yenching U (now Beida), and long before he made it his lifelong scholarly discipline.
Wuhan is a place of many histories - and a community of continued vibrancy. And as @once and @jotted’s tweets and Robert Bickers’ blogpost point out, hopefully not to be reduced to be only known as the feared epicenter of #coronavirus contagion.
