large urban area, east-central Hubei (Hupeh) sheng (province), central China. It is located on the south bank of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) at its confluence with the Han River, opposite Hankou and Hanyang. Formerly an independent city, it was merged with those two entities in 1949 to form a district of the new city of Wuhan. Wuchang is the oldest of the three former cities of the Wuhan conurbation. For a time it was the capital of the Wu dynasty during the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo) period (220–280 CE), and it now serves as both the administrative and the cultural centre of both Wuhan city and Hubei province. Northeast of the Wuchang district proper and within the conurbation's Qingshan district is the huge Wuhan iron and steel complex, built in the 1950s and one of the largest in China.