The coronavirus has put Wuhan on the world map again. Wuhan is best known in modern Chinese history as the cradle of the 1911 revolution that toppled the Qing dynasty, China's last.
The city was briefly China's capital in 1927 under the Kuomintang government's left wing led by Wang Jingwei. Wuhan later served as China's wartime capital for 10 months in 1937 during the second Sino-Japanese war.
A number of women are among the city's most famous natives.
WU YI
Dubbed China's "Iron Lady", she was born in the provincial capital of Hubei in central China in 1938. She was instrumental in China's accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001, engaging her United States counterparts in tough trade negotiations as minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation from 1998 to 2003.
Madam Wu was promoted to the Communist Party's decision-making Politburo in 2002 and vice-premier in 2003 when she took on the additional role of health minister to help deal with the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic.
She chose not to dye her greying hair in a country where septuagenarian male leaders appear in public sporting pitch-black hair.
Forbes magazine considered her the second-most powerful woman in the world in 2004, 2005 and 2007. She never married.
FU MINGXIA
The quadruple Olympic diving champion was also born in Wuhan. She became the world's youngest diving champion at the age of 12 when she captured the 10m platform gold at the world swimming championships in Perth, Australia, in 1991. She was born in August 1978.
Ms Fu became the second-youngest - days shy of turning 14 - gold medallist in Olympic history when she finished first in the 10m platform event at the 1992 Barcelona Games.
She bagged gold medals in the 3m springboard and the 10m platform at the 1996 Atlanta Games and announced her retirement, saying she was "too old" at the tender age of 18.
In a comeback, she added a fourth gold in the 3m springboard at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
She retired after the Sydney Games and is married to Hong Kong businessman Antony Leung, who served as financial secretary of the city from 2001 to 2003.
LI NA
The first Chinese tennis player to win a Grand Slam title, she was born in Wuhan in 1982. She won not just one, but two Grand Slam titles - the 2011 French Open and 2014 Australian Open.
Her career-high Women's Tennis Association (WTA) ranking was No. 2 in the world in February 2014. During her career, she collected nine WTA Tour singles titles.
She is married to her coach Jiang Shan.
Benjamin Kang-Lim
