There's little evidence to show that the
site of
CHANGSHA , Hunan's tidy,
nondescript capital, has been inhabited for
three thousand years, but 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 .
Caught in the crossfire of the
nineteenth-century peasant rebellions which
swept through central China, most of what
was left of the old city was torched in the
1940s by the Guomindang, who were trying to
dislodge Japanese resistance, and the rest
was largely cleared in recent
modernizations. While ancient sites and
objects occasionally surface nearby - such
as Shang-era bronze wine jars, and the
magnificently preserved contents of three
Han
burial mounds - their presence is
swamped by more contemporary structures:
busy clover-leaf intersections, grey
concrete facades and stylish modern street
lighting.
Primarily, though, Changsha is known for
its links with Mao . Aged eighteen
and intent on becoming educated, he arrived
here from his native village as nationwide
power struggles erupted following the Manchu
dynasty's fall in 1911, and soon put aside
his 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 favour
with the local warlord Zhao Hendi ,
though he soon violently turned on the
students and workers who supported him. Mao,
by now a teacher, was singled out and fled
to Beijing, where he was soon to co-found
the Chinese Communist Party. He later
returned to the city and spent much of the
1920s organizing peasant uprisings in rural
Hunan.
Mao was by no means the only young
Hunanese profoundly affected by 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
lookalike and briefly empowered successor.
Today, Changsha's few formal attractions are
dominated by the Chairman's presence, 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 easier by well-organized
public transport.
