On the 17th January 1992, a typically cold Beijing morning, Deng Xiaoping’s private train sets off southward from Platform Number One of the capital’s main Railway Station. Over the course of an overnight, one-thousand two hundred kilometre journey, the diesel train rumbles across the North China Plain and the provinces of Hebei and Henan. It crosses the Yellow River on a line originally built in the very early twentieth century by foreign investors, the ruling Qing dynasty then being too short on money to pay for it themselves. It does not stop on its way.
Finally, at 10.31am on the 18th January 1992, Deng’s train crosses the broad Yangtze River and pulls into Platform Number One of Wuchang train station in the city of Wuhan.
For today’s episode we welcome Chris Courtney to talk about the city of Wuhan and its role in China’s modern history. Chris is a social and environmental historian of modern China. His research focusses upon the city of Wuhan and its rural hinterland, a region where he lived and conducted research for over five years. His monograph, entitled The Nature of Disaster in China, was the first major study of the 1931 Central China Flood, a largely forgotten catastrophe that killed in excess of two million people. His current research focusses on the problem of heat in modern Chinese cities, exploring how emergent technologies such as ice factories, electric fans, and air conditioning transformed the cultural and social landscape of Wuhan.
@CJCourtneyWuhan
