Answer to One China Travel Question
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Q: I will travel to Xiaogan, Hubei, later this year and live there for some time. What is life like there? Could you tell me about conditions of the city?
| | A: Xiaogan is a prefectural city. That means it is below the provincial capital (which, in your case, is Wuhan) and above counties. The city proper (excluding the five or six municipalities and counties that make up the larger prefectural "city") has a population of 300,000. Xiaogan is not all that different from other cities of the prefectural level in China. It is not as fancy as Shanghai or Beijing or even Wuhan, but has seen considerable development of its own. Most of these cities today are mixtures of new urban culture and old rural culture. Traffic may be chaotic, sanitation is not up to Western standard - so on and so forth. Xiaogan, however, is only 40 miles or so (55 kilometers) outside Wuhan, which is one of the largest cities in China. The train ride from Xiaogan to Wuhan takes about 40 minutes, and one can also get to Wuhan by long distance coach. The region where Xiaogan is located is not particular affluent nor particular poor, although some neighboring areas (especially those north of it) do have a poverty problem, which is true for most of rural areas in China anyway. As for weather, it should not extremely cold in winter time. Wuhan has the reputation of being one of the four so-called "furnaces" in China - hot and humid during summer months due to the fact that it is located in a very low part of the Yangtze valley. It should not be all like that in Xiaogan as it is some distance from the great river. Air-conditioning in summer should be readily available. Heating used to be a problem in that region because people considered winter there bearable without it. You may want to ask local people about it.
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