Wuhan, Three Cities on the Yangtze

Wuhan is really three cities fused by water — Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang — where the Han River joins the Yangtze and bridges do the work of stitching. The Yellow Crane Tower rises above Wuchang on Snake Hill, rebuilt many times since the third century and endlessly quoted by Tang poets; the view from the top explains why they bothered. Below it, East Lake is one of the largest urban lakes in China, several times the size of Hangzhou's West Lake, ringed by a cycling greenway, plum gardens and the Chu-themed slopes of Moshan.

Hankou keeps the granite banks and consulates of the old treaty-port concessions, best walked in the evening when the Bund lights come on and river ferries cross to Wuchang for a few yuan. The Hubei Provincial Museum is the essential stop: the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng gave up a 65-piece set of bronze chime bells cast around 433 BC, still in tune, with replicas played in daily performances. Across the water in Hanyang, Guiyuan Temple keeps a hall of five hundred individually carved luohan statues. In late March, cherry blossom turns the Wuhan University campus and Moshan into a happy crush.

The food is unapologetic. Breakfast — guozao, the local ritual of passing the morning — means hot dry noodles tossed with sesame paste, doupi rice parcels and soup dumplings eaten standing up in Hubu Alley. Later come spicy duck necks and crayfish by the kilo. Humid summers earn the city its furnace nickname, so spring and autumn are far kinder for a Yangtze itinerary through central China.