Wuhan

Famous from Cui Hao's Tang poem, but the bridge approach took its old site, so in 1985 it was rebuilt on a hill about a kilometre away. The five storeys are concrete, so there is a lift inside, and the top looks down on the bridge and river.

Among the widest lakes inside any Chinese city, with a greenway of over 100 kilometres round the shore for cycling on hired bikes. The causeway stretches across the water are the breeziest, and with almost no shade, midday is best avoided.

From mid to late March the cherry avenues on campus bloom together. In that season outsiders need booking for a set day and time slot; in other months the 1930s halls under green tiles are the attraction.

The prize is the set of 65 bronze bells from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, dug up in 1978, still sounding notes from 2,400 years ago. A hall inside plays replica bells at several daily sessions. The sword of King Goujian of Yue is here too.

Opened in 1957 as the first bridge over the Yangtze, with cars on top and trains underneath. A walkway lets you cross on foot, and from midstream the river runs wide and unbroken upstream and down.

A lane packed with breakfast stalls, where hot dry noodles, doupi and mianwo can all be tried in one stop. Locals come early, eat standing and go; once the sun is high it fills with tourists and the queues lengthen.

Concession-era banks and a customs house line the riverside road, with a broad park running beyond the dyke in front. On summer evenings people wade into the river to swim, and in flood season part of the park goes under.

Five hundred arhats sit in rows in its hall, and you tell your fortune by starting at any one and counting your age, then reading the number of the arhat you stop at. Slips explaining the numbers are sold at the exit. It hides down a Hanyang lane.

The red-brick building where the rebels set up their military government after the Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911, the start of the Xinhai Revolution. A statue of Sun Yat-sen stands in the square, and it sits just below the Yellow Crane Tower hill.

An old Wuchang lane keeping the churches, schools and hospital that late-Qing missionaries built. Small galleries and teahouses have moved in, and a few paces from the avenue the traffic noise is gone.

Setting of the tale of the musician Yu Boya and the woodcutter Zhong Ziqi, the one listener who truly understood his playing, on Moon Lake in Hanyang. A stele tells how Boya cut his strings when Ziqi died; the garden is small, an hour's visit.

A pavilion at the foot of Guishan on the Hanyang bank of the Yangtze, looking straight across at the Yellow Crane Tower. Cui Hao's poem about that tower supplied its name, and far fewer people come, so the river breeze can be enjoyed in peace.

A short street in the old Russian concession, named for Li Yuanhong, a Republican-era president born in Huangpi. Cafes and small bookshops fill Western buildings over a century old, a block back from the Hankou riverfront, an easy add-on to the river walk.

A mountain in Huangpi, north of Wuhan, claimed in legend as the home of Hua Mulan, with Taoist shrines and temples strung along the ridge. Driving out takes some 90 minutes, and the stone stairs to the top are long, so start climbing early.

A temple built up the south slope of Hongshan in Wuchang, its halls stepping up the hill. At the top stands the Hongshan Pagoda, first raised in the Yuan, with a view over Wuchang from its upper floors. There is a vegetarian dining hall inside.