Changsha (长沙) is the capital of Hunan, a city of about ten million people on the lower Xiang River in the province's north-east. It has been rebuilt on the same riverbank for more than two thousand years: a Qin commandery, a Han kingdom whose sealed tombs still surface in excavations, a Tang kiln that shipped painted stoneware to West Asia and Africa, and a Qing rice market ranked among China's four largest. The twentieth century burned it in 1938 and saw it withstand three Japanese assaults before 1949; the decades after made it a centre of construction machinery, broadcasting and university research. Today it anchors the Chang-Zhu-Tan metropolitan triangle with Zhuzhou and Xiangtan, and its riverbank sandbar of Orange Isle is the city's best-known image.
Changsha has been organised by the Xiang River for two thousand years. The crossing that joined the banks by boat and bridge, the port that made Changsha a rice market, and the river still running through the present city are three faces of the same water.
Orange Isle is a five-kilometre sandbar in the Xiang at Changsha. How the island formed, the poem written at its tip and the park it became are three turns in the long working life of a single river sandbar.
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Yuelu Academy was founded in 976 below Yuelu Mountain and never stopped teaching. Its founders, its masters and the university that grew out of the compound are the three stages of one school's long continuity.
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Three sealed Han tombs were excavated at Mawangdui, Changsha, between 1972 and 1974. The three mounds hold an accidental discovery, a woman in silk and the Han south her tomb goods describe, a working southern economy read like a farm inventory.
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The Hunan Museum holds the province's excavated past, from Mawangdui silks to the underglaze-painted wares of the Changsha kilns. Its building, its route through the galleries and its ceramics are the three ways the collection is laid out for visitors.
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Tianxin Pavilion is a gate tower on the only surviving piece of Changsha's old city wall. The wall, the revolution that dismantled it and the tower standing today are the three stages the old enclosure went through.
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Pozi Street is a thousand-metre street of food in old Changsha. The street itself, the Fire Palace at its heart and what the cooking actually is make the city's night eating one long habit, alive from dusk to well past midnight.
ReadXiang embroidery grew from the household needlework of Hunan women into one of China's four famous embroidery styles. The craft, the subjects it chooses and the houses that keep it are the three things that hold the style together today.
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Liuyang, east of Changsha, has made fireworks for some 1,400 years and supplies much of the world. The making, the festival calendar and the industry the craft built are the three stages of a trade that has run on ritual demand.
ReadOrange Isle is a five-kilometre sandbar in the middle of the Xiang at Changsha, a park crowned by a sculpture of the young Mao Zedong.
Yuelu Mountain is the 300-metre hill on the west bank of the Xiang at Changsha, a slope of temples, martyrs' tombs and the Yuelu Academy.
Yuelu Academy, founded in 976 below Yuelu Mountain, is the only ancient Chinese academy that still teaches as part of a university.
Mawangdui holds three sealed tombs of the Han kingdom of Changsha, opened from 1972, including the intact grave of Lady Xin Zhui.
The Hunan Museum on Dongfeng Road is the province's largest history and art museum, rebuilt in 2017 around the Mawangdui finds.
The Changsha kiln at Tongguan on the Xiang produced the world's earliest underglaze-painted ceramics in the Tang dynasty.
Tianxin Pavilion is a rebuilt Ming gate tower on the only surviving section of Changsha's old city wall.
Pozi Street is Changsha's thousand-metre street of snacks and century-old food houses, busiest after dark.
Baisha Well, four granite-ringed springs south of Changsha's old centre, gave the city drinking water for two thousand years.
Xiang embroidery, one of China's four famous embroidery styles, is Hunan's needle art of split silk thread and embroidered tigers.
The Xie Zilong Photography Museum by the Yanghu wetland is a white concrete hall holding early photographs of China.
Liuyang, the county-level city east of Changsha, has made fireworks for some 1,400 years and supplies about half of China's sales.
