Jianghan Plain

{{Short description|Alluvial Plain of the Yangtze River in Hubei, China}}

File:Jiayu County - Panjiawan - on the Yangtze embankment - P1540288.JPGs stretch for hundreds of kilometers along the Yangtze and the Hanshui, protecting the fields and villages on the low-lying plain from seasonal flooding]]

Jianghan Plain ({{zh|c=江汉平原}}; Wade Giles: Chiang-han Pʻing-yüan; pinyin: Jiānghàn Píngyuán), named for the confluence of the Yangtze ('Jiang') and Han ('han') rivers, is an alluvial plain located in the middle and south of Hubei, China. Wuhan, the most populous city in Central China,{{cite web |url=http://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/eng/document.jsp?did=96289&cid=512&oid=32 |title=Focus on Wuhan, China |publisher=The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service |accessdate=February 10, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131212120036/http://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/eng/document.jsp?did=96289&cid=512&oid=32 |archive-date=December 12, 2013 |url-status=dead }} is located on the plain. It shares the border with Dongtinghu Plain. It has an area of more than 30 thousands square kilometers. The region was once a large wetland, but was gradually colonized by settlers beginning in the Neolithic period.Zhang Chi, “The Qujialing-Shijiahe Culture in the Middle Yangzi River Valley,” in A Companion to Chinese Archaeology, ed. Anne P. Underhill (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 510–34; Rowan K. Flad and Pochan Chen, Ancient Central China: Centers and Peripheries along the Yangzi River (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). This accelerated when the state of Chu established its capital there in the middle of the 1st millennium BC, and when the Qin and Han states built dikes to protect farmland from seasonal floods.Brian Lander, “State Management of River Dikes in Early China: New Sources on the Environmental History of the Central Yangzi Region.” T’oung Pao 100 (2014): 287-324. The Jianghan area has been an important food grain region of China since at least the Ming Dynasty.{{cite book|last=Zhang|first=Jiayan|title=Coping with Calamity: Environmental Change and Peasant Response in Central China, 1736-1949|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JSBBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA265|date=1 May 2014|publisher=UBC Press|isbn=978-0-7748-2597-9|page=265}}