Changsha
Orange Isle
Orange 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.
A province read through its lake, its stone and its working hands
Hunan.
Four landscapes, one river spine
Hunan is smaller than its neighbours and more varied than its map suggests. In the north lies the Dongting Lake plain, where a ferry town wrote China's most quoted tower essay. The Xiang runs through the middle: Changsha, Xiangtan and Hengyang are river cities first. In the west the Wuling range lifts quartz sandstone into pillars, and Tujia and Miao villages keep wooden houses over the water. In the south the hills turn red, Langshan's Danxia cliffs stand beside granite Hengshan, and Yongzhou keeps old gates. Craft holds it together: embroidery, ceramics, bamboo paper, tea bricks, fireworks.
Yueyang Tower
Yueyang Tower stands on the shore of Dongting Lake, and the essay written about it is known by heart in China. Opening with the tower and the lake sets the water and the words before the pillars and the old towns arrive.
Explore this placeBegin with the classics
Four places that show how far one province can stretch.
Zhangjiajie
Wulingyuan
A scenic area of more than three thousand quartz sandstone pillars that became a World Heritage Site in 1992.
Huaihua
Hongjiang Ancient Commercial Town
The old river-port town where the Yuan river trade accumulated, remembered as China's only intact Ming-Qing commercial city.
Hengyang
Hengshan
Hengshan, the Southern Sacred Mountain, is a granite massif of temples that rises from the plain north of Hengyang.
Look a little closer
Four longer reads, each following its own thread.
From the journal
Two rivers, one long city
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.
From the journal
The river where the boat races begin
At Miluo, the poet Qu Yuan walked into the river in 278 BC, and the boats that went after him became dragon boat racing. The story, the races and the festival that now fills the national calendar begin on this water.
From the journal
Tea pressed into a brick
Anhua County presses dark tea into bricks and logs that were built to travel. The leaf, the road it took and the county that still makes it are the three stages of a mountain product's long journey to market, from caravan to domestic table.
From the journal
A village with a bridge at its gate
Shanggantang is a Zhou-family village of Ming and Qing houses in Jiangyong County, with a stone bridge at its gate that has stood since 1126. The Buyin Bridge carried the old post road, and the village was listed as a historic Chinese village in 2007.
Keep exploring
Choose a city: start with its highlights or continue reading in the full article collection.
Changsha
Hunan's capital spreads along the Xiang River, a city of kilns, academies and rice trade rebuilt on the same bank for 2,400 years.
All articlesZhuzhou
Zhuzhou, where China's two great north-south and east-west railways cross, is Hunan's rail and industrial city with the Yan Emperor's tomb in its southern hills.
All articlesXiangtan
Xiangtan, the old river port once called Little Nanjing, is the Xiang River prefecture that raised Mao Zedong, Peng Dehuai and Qi Baishi.
All articlesYiyang
Yiyang stands on the Zi River at the southern edge of Dongting Lake, a bamboo and rice city that ships Anhua's dark tea bricks.
All articlesLoudi
Loudi, Hunan's central rail and steel city on the eastern edge of the Xuefeng range, is the gateway to the Meishan highlands of Xinhua.
All articlesYueyang
Hunan's lake-port city where Dongting Lake drains to the Yangtze, known nationally for Yueyang Tower.
All articlesChangde
A Yuan River city in northwest Hunan, ancient Wuling, trading gateway to the southwest and claimant of the Peach Blossom Spring.
All articlesZhangjiajie
A prefecture-level city in northwest Hunan that renamed itself in 1994 after the stone-pillar national park inside it.
All articlesHuaihua
Hunan's largest prefecture-level city by area, a mountain rail junction where five main lines meet on the upper Yuan river.
All articlesXiangxi
The Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture at Hunan's western edge, run from Jishou with seven mountain counties around it.
All articlesHengyang
Hunan's second city, a transport crossroads on the Xiang River with the temple mountain of Hengshan behind it.
All articlesChenzhou
A border city in southern Hunan whose lakes and red-earth hills fill the gap between Hunan and Guangdong.
All articlesYongzhou
An old southern prefecture in Hunan where the Xiao and Xiang rivers meet and a school of philosophy took its name.
All articlesShaoyang
A southwestern Hunan city whose danxia cliffs and mountain pastures sit behind an old commercial town.
All articlesPhoto credits and rights
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Sandstone pillars stand in ranks below the viewpoint on Tianzi Mountain, their tops level with the forested ridge.chensiyuan / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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Banners for the old guild halls hang above the stone street that runs through the gate of Hongjiang's commercial quarter.Ninedyz / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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Layered forested ridges of the Hengshan range recede under a streaked blue sky.牛糞 / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗