Powering up the China Yangzi from Nanjing into eastern Anhui you immediately pass MA'ANSHAN , an industrial nightmare notable for a few antique riverside buildings roughly marking the place where the itinerant romantic Tang poet Li Bai drowned in 762 AD after drunkenly falling out of a boat while trying to touch the moon's reflection. A better stop is WUHU , a built-up but brisk trading crossroads set on the Yangzi's south bank at its confluence with the Qingyi River. Formerly a treaty port, this was as far upstream as steamers could navigate, and the shipyards were kept busy turning out smaller rafts capable of carrying coastal wares farther along the Yangzi and its tributaries. In return, the steamers loaded up with provincial goods bound for Shanghai or the oceans beyond. Wuhu's wharves still handle a substantial amount of cargo, and you'll see boats heading for Nanjing or Shanghai piled high with bamboo or weighed down with rice, but much modern traffic is carried away by rail, and the city's focus is increasingly towards textiles and other light industries. These include wrought-iron pictures - possibly China's most pointless handicraft - an artistic technique said to have resulted from an argument between a painter and a blacksmith in the seventeenth century.

 

For visitors, Wuhu's importance is as a staging post for Huang Shan in the south of the province, besides being a regular stop for Yangzi cruise boats ; it's also where the rail line from Shanghai links with north-south services. A waterfront walk is the obvious way to pass the time between connections. Wuhu's train station is in the ugly northeastern quarter of town, facing the bus station across a huge empty field. Bus #4 runs from here down Dazhai Lu past hilly Zheshan Park on the right - where you can clamber up a semi-ruinous three-storey pagoda for views over the town - before terminating at the Yangzi ferry terminal , about 1km north of where the rivers meet at the five-storey, mid-stream Zhongjiang Pagoda . Not far from here, through the leafy, narrow streets of the old town centre, is Jing Hu (Mirror Lake), which is little more than an overgrown pond and small pavilion. Of the hotels , the Tieshan Binguan, 3 Gengxin Lu (tel 0553/3835981, fax 3830240; ¥150-200) is nicely located on the west side of Zheshan Park, or you can try for a budget room at the train station's hostel (¥30-75).