Yichang, used to be called "Yiling" in the ancient times, has been renown as "the gateway to the Three Gorges at the joint of Chongqing Province and Hubei Province" where the Yangtze begins to run placidly and the mountain ranges stretch eastwards to the plain. It was renamed as "Yichang" which symbols "prosperity" in Chinese in the Qing Dynasty.

Yichang covers an area of 21,000 km2, with a population of 4.15 million, consisted of 5 counties, 3 cities and 5 districts. Yichang, rich in culture and with a history of more than 2400 years, is the birthplace of the ba and chu Cultures as well as the hometown of Qu Yuan (339 BC - 278 BC) , a famous poet during the Warring States Period in ancient China who was famous for his contributions to the poetry collection known as the Chu-ci (also known as Songs of the South or Songs of Chu), and Wang Zhaojun, who famed as one of the "Four Beauties" of ancient China and was sent by Emperor Yuan in the Western Han Dynasty(206BC-8AD) to marry the then Hun chieftain in order to establish friendly relations with the Han Dynasty through marriage. 

Yichang, rich in hydraulic resources, is the site of the Three Gorges Project as well as 4 large hydropower stations with the total installed capacity of 27 million kilowatts. Yichang is also abundant in mineral resources (53 kinds in total) as one of the largest eight districts rich in phosphorus ore.

Yichang is famous and attractive for its beautiful mountains, rivers, gorges and caves, etc. as one of the best cities of tourism, which owns 2 national 5A-class tourist attractions, 9 national 4A-class tourist attractions and 14 national 3A-class tourist attractions. As an ecologically reserved city, Yichang\'s forest coverage rate has surpassed 58%, with a stable air quality record of about 350 days above grade 2 and the water quality of 99 rivers above grade 3 (71% above grade 2).

Yichang has a well-constructed transportation system, and it has formed a three-dimensional transport system consisted of railways, highways and aviation. At the joint of key railways such as the Jiaozuo-Liuzhou Railway, the Yichang-Wanzhou Railway and the Wuhan-Yichang Railway as well as the expressways including the Shanghai-Chengdu Expressway and the Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway, it has became an important transportation hub on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, with the Three Gorges Modern Logistics Center under construction and construction of a first class domestic airport.

Yichang has become a regional central city in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and a provincial sub-central city which gains firm support from the provincial government in Hubei Province. In the past years, Yichang has experienced rapid development and made great achievements in all aspects:  its gross regional product exceeded 50 billion yuan in 2004, 100 billion yuan in 2008, and 200 billion yuan in 2011, to reach the goal of "GRP quadrupled in seven years", and quadruple the gross industrial production and the local public fiscal budget revenue in five years. In 2011, Yichang\'s gross regional product reached 214.1 billion yuan, over 16.1% higher than the previous year; total fixed assets investment reached 11.4 billion yuan, increased by 33.1%. The value added of above-scale enterprises was 110 billion yuan, with an increase of 26.6%, and the local public fiscal budget revenue was 11.4 billion yuan, with an increase of 37.1%. Based on a sustainable development and its great potential, Yichang has become a promising city in Hubei, among the cities along the Yangtze River and in central China as well.

Successively, Yichang was in the past decades evaluated as one of the national model cities, the national model cities of environment protection, the most cleanest national cities,　the excellent tourism cities of China, the national garden cities,  the national advanced cities of forestry ecological environment construction and the national advanced cities of scientific and technological progress.