Wuhan in my eyes Every time the word Wuhan comes into my eyes, I can’t help think of the friendly Wuhanese. Having traveled throughout China, Wuhanese is among the very few who are friendly to persons from elsewhere. This is quite different from that in Beijing and Shanghai where if you are not a local, you are sure to be discriminated. On the mind of the Beijingese and Shanghaiese, they are the masters of China. Anyone, whoever he is, Cantonese, Sichuanese, or Hunanese, he is a peasant in the eyes of the Beijingese and Shanghaiese. So people from all over China visit Beijing and Shanghai only to find themselves lower classes than they once think. But this doesn’t happen in Wuhan. I once studied the reason why the Wuhanese is tolerant to outlanders and the results come as follows.
a.Wuhan has always been a center in China, where people come and go very often. This can be traced back to the 1st century when it was the time of Three Kingdoms. Anyone who read the novel Three Kingdoms can remember at that time, Wuhan was an economic and communication center of China. It was once a fortress which all the three kingdoms, Kingdom Wei, Shu and Wu expected to occupy. So many wars happened there. The well-known Chibi War happened very close to Wuhan, about 100 kilometers away, southwest. And because of the well-developed agriculture there, the Jianghan Plain was praised to be a barn. People all over the country went there, buying and selling. Business was done day and night, which attracted more people there for profit. This helped the communication between people of different places and Wuhan. When this communication is established, the acceptance of outlanders was fixed in the heart of the locals. Wuhanese in most part don’t take outlanders as outlanders. They accept them as part of the locals. So despite that Wuhan in many eyes is a southern city in China, the people there speak with northern accent and Hubei dialect belongs to the northern dialects of China. Of course, this derives from the communication of people from the north. It is also a proof that Wuhan is a place which once had a lot of northerners.
b.Wuhan was once an economical center of China, but in the past century, it was more an industrial center in China. Since the second half of the 19th century, in the years of 60s, the governor of Hubei was the well-known reformer Zhang Zhidong, who was one of the advocators of the reformers in the late Qing Dynasty. Under his initiation, Wuhan became an industrial centre of China. The well-known Hanyang Steel and Iron works was established there. It is one of the first modern industry works in China. A well-known product of it is the Hanyang rifle which adopted Deutch technology. In the coming decades, the Hanyang rifle was the best rifle made in China. Later, Governor Zhang introduced more investments from abroad and set up more modern factories in Wuhan. This also attracted a lot of people from around China to Wuhan, where they did business. But this is not the biggest effect. The biggest is that in Wuhan appeared the first batch of modern industrial workers in China. Before this, China never had modern industrial workers. The workers in then China were most handycraft industry workers who were different from modern industrial workers. A difference between the two kinds of workers is that the modern ones had fewer local ideas for they came from different parts of China. A skilled modern industrial worker might work in this factory today, but it’s very possible that he works in another factory tommorrow for there he is better paid. So the fluidity of workers is more often than the handycraft workers who don’t change their jobs much. This fluidity brought more tolerance to the outlanders. As this tolerance is inherited, and passed down from generation to generation, it became part of the character of the Wuhanese.
c.The last reason is that Wuhan has always been an educational center in China. Governor Zhang Zhidong established the first modern college in Hubei, which later developed into the well-known Wuhan University. Since then a lot of youth from Hubei, Hunan, Henan, Anhui and other parts of China enrolled themselves in this university. And after that more universities were established there. In the first 50 years of 20th century, Wuhan became one of the education centers following Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing in China. It is now enjoying the same educational status as it did 50 years ago. Universities brought many students from all corners of China to Wuhan, and it helps the communication between the Wuhanese and the outlanders.
In one word, Wuhan is the most tolerant city to outlanders. And most Wuhanese are generous, and easy-going. If you hope to develop your business, Wuhan is a good place.
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