Wuchang Riverside Park 武昌江滩

About Wuchang Riverside Park

Until the middle of the 2010s this shoreline carried sand yards and working wharves. From 2016 Wuhan cleared them, removing more than two hundred sand yards along its riverbanks, reorganising the use of the wharf frontage and returning about 70 hectares of riverside to green space; the Wuchang and Qingshan riversides were then built and opened section by section. In 2020 the city launched the Hundred-li Yangtze Ecological Corridor as a programme of sixteen projects, and the corridor was completed end to end in 2025 when the Wuchang Bay section opened. The parks are flood works as much as gardens: 63 floodgates along the Wuhan riverside have been rebuilt, every riverside floodgate inside the Third Ring Road now uses an assembled aluminium-alloy floodwall, and the planting belts are laid out in steps at different heights according to flood levels, using 156 tree and shrub species chosen for their tolerance of being submerged.

The newest stretch, Wuchang Bay, occupies the site of the former Wuchang Shipyard. The builders reinforced the slopes, rebuilt the embankment and replaced the old floodwall with a reinforced-concrete one, while keeping industrial remains such as gantry cranes and slipways and working them into the landscape; the result has stepped river-viewing platforms and a red boardwalk within sight of the Yingwuzhou Yangtze River Bridge. Further downstream the Yujiatou riverside ecological park stands at the Yujiatou waterworks, one of Wuhan's drinking-water intakes, where eleven wharves and nine sand-and-gravel yards stood before 2016. Planting gives the riverside a different character through the year: cherry, peach and magnolia in spring, cosmos on the embankment slope in summer, pink muhly grass in autumn and red plum in winter. Chinese bamboo partridges and other wild animals are now regularly seen along the walks.

What to look for

• Wuchang Bay 1956 Park on the old Wuchang Shipyard site, where gantry cranes and slipways have been kept among the new planting
• The stepped river-viewing platforms and red boardwalk near the Yingwuzhou Yangtze River Bridge
• The 6,000-square-metre stand of pink muhly grass in the open-woodland boardwalk area of the fifth phase, at its best in autumn
• The cosmos planting on the embankment slope beside Angel Square in the fifth phase, in more than ten shades
• Viewpoints along the bank looking towards the Yellow Crane Tower
• Yujiatou riverside ecological park at the Yujiatou waterworks, reclaimed from eleven wharves and nine sand yards

Location & getting there

Getting to Wuchang Riverside Park

Choose a precise starting address and return transport stop. Access to individual buildings, performances or viewing platforms is separate from access to public streets.

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