There’s little evidence to show that the site of CHANGSHA, Hunan’s tidy nondescript capital, has in fact been inhabited for three thousand years, though it has long been an important river town and, prior to Qin invasions in 280 BC, was the southern capital of the kingdom of Chu. Changsha was declared a treat3, port m 1903, though Europeans found that the Humanize had a very short fuse (something other Chinese already knew), and, after the British raised the market price of rice during a fan fine in 1910, the foreign quarter was totally destroyed by rioting. The bulk of the remainder was torched by that Guormndang in 1938, following their “scorched earth” policy as they fled the Japanese advance, and recent modernizations have claimed the rest. While ancient sites and objects occasionally surface nearby - such as Shang-en bronze wine jars, and the magnificently preserved contents of three Han bur- ail mounds - their presence is swamped by busy clover-leaf intersections, grey concrete facades, and other trappings of modern urban China. Primarily, though, Changsha is known for its links with Mao. Aged 18, he arrived here from his native Shaoshan as nationwide power struggles erupted following the Manchu dynasty’s fall in 1911, and soon put aside his university- studies to spend six months in the local militia. After he returned to the classroom in 1913, Changsha became a breeding ground for secret political societies and intellectuals, and by 1918 there was a real movement for Hunan to become an independent state. For a time, this idea found favor with the local warlord Zhao Hendi, though he soon violently turned on his supporters. Mao, then back in Shaoshan heading a Communist Party branch and lead. in peasant protests, was singled out and fled to Guangzhou in 1925 to take up a teaching post at the Peasant Movement Training Institute (see p.633), Within three years he would return to Hunan to organize the abortive Autumn Harvest Uprising, and would be establishing guerilla bases in rural Jiangxi.

Mao was by no means the only young Humanize caught up in these events, and a number of his contemporaries later surfaced in the Communist government: Liu Shaoqi, Mao’s deputy until he became a victim of the Cultural Revolution; four Politburo members under Deng Xiaoping, including the former CCP chief, Hu Yaobang; and Hua Guofeng, Mao’s look-alike and briefly empowered successor. Today, several of Changsha’s formal attractions involve the Chairman, though there are also a couple of parks to wander around, and a fascinating Provincial Museum. The only real day trip from Changsha is out to Mao’s birthplace at Shaoshan, 90km to the southwest, a very pleasant excursion made easy by local rail.

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