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.