Wuhu  Wuhu () is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Anhui province, China. Sitting on the southeast bank of the Yangtze River, Wuhu borders Xuancheng to the southeast, Chizhou and Tongling to the southwest, Hefei city to the northwest, Ma'anshan city to the northeast, Jiangsu Province to the east, and is approximately southwest of Nanjing. As of 2017, the city had a population of approximately 3,696,000 officially registered inhabitants. The prefecture-level city of Wuhu administers 8 county-level divisions, including 4 districts 1 county-level city, and 3 counties. By the end of 2017, the total population was estimated to be 3,842,100, of whom 1,665,000 live in the 4 urban districts and the others live in the counties. The city has over 47 ethnic minorities present — the largest being the Muslim population. There are other ethnic minorities with over 500 inhabitants in the city: Yi, Tujia, Miao, Zhuang, and Manchu. Jiang-Huai Mandarin, a branch of Mandarin Chinese, is widely spoken in urban area, while some people in the counties speak Wu Chinese. "Putonghua", or Standard Mandarin, was commonly used in this area. Wuhu is known to have been inhabited since at least 770 BCE. It became a strategically important town during the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD), when it was controlled by the Eastern Wu. At this time it was known as Jiuzi (Chiu-tzu ). Under the Ming dynasty, Wuhu developed into a major commercial center and river port and since that time has been known as a center of the rice trade. In 1644, the Hongguang Emperor (better known as the Prince of Fu), one of the last emperors of the Ming Dynasty, was captured by forces of the new Qing Dynasty in Wuhu. During the Taiping Rebellion, Wuhu exchanges hands over five times between Taiping and Imperial forces. The city became a treaty port in 1876 and has remained a commercial center since that time. The city's Roman Catholic cathedral, St. Joseph's Cathedral (), dates from this time. Most of the downtown area alongside the Yangtze River was ceded in the British concession. Trade in rice, wood, and tea flourished at Wuhu until the Warlord Era of the 1920s and 1930s, when bandits were active in the area.