Women’s Street Skewers 女人街串串 @ Wuhan

Finally we had a chance to explore Wuhan on our own in the evening. Princess and I went to Jianghan Road for a night of snacking along the night market.

Jianghan Road 江汉路 is the most famous and historic commercial street in Wuhan, China. Stretching 1,600 meters, this century-old pedestrian boulevard sits right in the heart of Hankou. It uniquely blends modern shopping with colonial-era European architecture. Often called a “20th-century architectural museum,” the street features over 40 preserved buildings in Byzantine, Roman, and Renaissance styles.

It is a vibrant hub of department stores, boutiques, and large shopping centres. It truly comes alive at night when neon lights turn on and street performers fill the area. And the place is easily accessible by Wuhan Metro as the surrounding area is usually jammed and so taking a car here is just a nightmare as we found out. We had to walk almost 20min to get the Jianghan Road proper.

The surrounding alleys are packed with street food stalls. But you can snack along the way. As Princess and I walked towards Jianghan Road, we picked a chuanchuan store for our dinner.

Jingzhou Shashi Women’s Street Skewers 荆州沙市女人街串串 is both the name of this store as well as a famous snack from the neighbouring town of Jingzhou called mala tang 麻辣烫. Jingzhou is a historic city which has been fought over by all parties during the Three Kingdoms for its strategic location. In the district of Shashi there’s a night market called Women’s Street (like the one in Kowloon) which is famous for mala tang. This style has been transported to this night market in Wuhan.

The concept is very similar to Japanese oden 御田, or more commonly known as Kantoni 関東煮, where everything is simmering away in a cauldron of mala soup. You order what you like from a menu on the wall. Everything is priced based on the number of skewers. Each wooden skewer is RMB 3 and metal skewer RMB 5. And everything is priced in multiples of 3 and 5. At the end of the meal, they count the number of skewers (like our loklok) and tell you the damage.

Once you are seated, the boss will make a dipping sauce for you. You can specify how spicy you want. There’s tahini sauce under the fiery mala sauce.

So as you ordered the skewers you want, the cooked food would be picked from the cauldron, stripped off the skewer and placed on the plate in front of you. The skewer would then be placed into a bamboo tube for counting later.

Some cost two skewers, some three metal skewers. You just order and the skewers start to pile up. And when you ordered something that’s not simmering away, the boss would shout across the room and asked if anyone else wanted the same before she took them out of the fridge and put them into the boiling soup.

There are many similar stores along the street, and they all looked similar to me. But I picked the one with the most youngsters and a constant stream of customers. Not a bad eat.

Visited Apr 2026