HUPEH, a province in the Yang-tze Valley in the heart of China. Pop. over 27 millions. Its core is a great plain traversed by the Yang-tze and its tributary the Han whose beds are slightly raised above its general surface. The Yang-tze is fringed with numerous marginal lakes which serve as reservoirs for its flood waters and flood-silt. The largest lake is the Tung-ting-hu which, lying on the border of Hupeh with Hunan, has given them both their names—the one north, the other south of the lake. The two constituted a single province until the reign of K'ang Hsi (1662 1722). The most fertile and most populous part of the plain forms a broad band lying close to the course of the Yang-tze and to the lake region around the lower Han. The upper part of the course of the Han through the plain is far less closely oc cupied. The crops are typical of Middle China whose climate permits the growth of temperate cereals and legumes in winter, and of the sub-tropical rice and cotton in summer. Rice is the largest crop but considerable quantities are imported.
The Hupeh plain is ringed by highland—the Hwai-yang-shan in the north, the Kiu-kung-shan in the south-east, a prolongation of the Kweichow plateau in the south-west and the eastern ranges of the Ta-pa-shan in the west. The highland rim is not continuous, being pierced by the river valleys of the Yang-tze, the Han, and the rivers of Hunan, through all of which the Hupeh basin com municates with the rest of China. Roads to South China pass through Hunan, to North China up the Han and over the Hwai yang-shan, while the Yang-tze leads to West China and east wards to the sea. Because of this focal position at the junction of routes from all quarters of China and as the geometrical centre of the country the Hupeh Basin has come to be known as the Central Basin of China. Its focal character is crystallized in the great triple city of Wu-Han, at the confluence of the Han with the Yang-tze, long the commercial centre for all the vast area of interior China drained to the Basin. Wu-Han is becoming one of the premier industrial districts of the country (see HANKOW). In the political situation it is a point of great tance, and under the imperial regime the viceroy of Hupeh, with his seat of government at Wuchang, was one of the most power ful officials in the empire.