Changsha

Changsha has been settled since at least the Warring States period, when it was a southern city of the state of Chu; Chu-era tombs and lacquerware have been dug from beneath the modern streets. Under the Han it was the seat of a kingdom of Changsha, and the tombs at Mawangdui, opened between 1972 and 1974, held silk paintings, medical and philosophical manuscripts and the body of Lady Dai, Xin Zhui, preserved well enough to astonish the archaeologists who found her. In 976 the Yuelu Academy was founded at the foot of Yuelu Mountain, and for centuries it made the city a centre of Confucian scholarship; the philosopher Zhu Xi lectured there in the twelfth century.

The city was besieged by Taiping forces in 1852 and held out, and it was opened to foreign trade in the first years of the twentieth century. Its schools turned out a generation of revolutionaries: Mao Zedong trained as a teacher at the First Normal School in the 1910s, and Liu Shaoqi and many others passed through the same classrooms.

The war with Japan nearly destroyed Changsha. In November 1938, fearing the city would fall, Chinese forces set it alight; the fire burned for days and left most of the old town in ruins. Three Japanese assaults between 1939 and 1942 were driven off, and the city fell in 1944, held for about a year until the Japanese surrender. Rebuilding after 1949 left a largely modern capital, and since the 1990s Changsha has grown very fast, adding towers, bridges, a metro, a high-speed station and a national reputation for television, nightlife and food.

Changsha people speak a Xiang dialect and share the reputation Hunanese have across China for bluntness, stubbornness and a fondness for argument, half-jokingly attributed to the quantity of chillies they eat. The city takes obvious pride in the Hunanese who shaped modern China, and Mao's presence is everywhere — the sculpture on Orange Isle, the restored school, the pilgrimage buses to Shaoshan.

It is also one of China's media capitals. Hunan Broadcasting System, whose entertainment channel and Mango TV streaming platform are among the most watched in the country, is based here, and the talent shows and variety programmes it makes have given Changsha a hold on Chinese popular culture out of proportion to its size. The same energy shows in a night-time economy that runs very late: bars along Jiefang West Road, music venues, and streets of food stalls still busy after midnight in summer.

Older traditions survive alongside it. Huagu xi, Hunan's flower-drum opera, is performed in local theatres; Xiang embroidery, a silk-thread tradition that originates in and is still mostly made in Changsha, was listed as national intangible cultural heritage in 2006; and the Yuelu Academy still functions as part of a university, with students walking past centuries-old stone tablets. Duanwu, the dragon-boat festival, carries extra weight in a province that claims the poet Qu Yuan as its own.

About 10 million people live in the Changsha municipality, and some 7.3 million of them in the continuous built-up area on both banks of the Xiang. The city has been one of the fastest-growing in inland China, drawing workers from across Hunan, and it has a reputation for housing that is cheap relative to incomes, which is often given as a reason young graduates stay.

The economy rests on heavy engineering, media and food. Changsha is a world centre for construction machinery, with Sany and Zoomlion both headquartered here, and it also makes cars, processes food and runs the broadcasting industry. Research institutions are strong: the hybrid rice work associated with Yuan Longping was based in the city, and several large universities sit on the west bank.

Daily rhythms are shaped by heat and by the river. Mornings begin early with a bowl of rice noodles; afternoons in summer are spent indoors or in shopping centres; evenings spill onto the riverside promenades, into night markets and onto restaurant terraces. Yuelu Mountain fills with walkers at dawn and at weekends. Traffic congestion, summer heat and the pressure of tourist crowds on the small historic areas are the usual complaints, along with the cost of crossing the river at rush hour.

Changsha is one of the great eating cities of inland China, and its cooking is Xiang cuisine at its hottest — fresh and pickled chillies, smoked and cured meats, garlic, fermented black beans and a sour edge, without the numbing Sichuan peppercorn. Duo jiao yu tou, a steamed fish head buried under chopped salted chillies, is the dish most associated with the province; hongshao rou, red-braised pork belly, is sold everywhere as Mao's favourite; la rou, home-smoked cured pork, is stir-fried with garlic shoots or dried chillies.

The street food is what visitors remember. Changsha stinky tofu, chou doufu, is black rather than pale, deep-fried until crisp and served with chilli sauce and coriander. Kou wei xia, crayfish tumbled in chilli and spice, takes over the night markets from late spring to early autumn and is eaten by hand with a beer. Tangyou baba, small sticky rice cakes fried in sugar syrup, and grilled skewers are sold from carts. Breakfast is a bowl of Changsha rice noodles in broth, topped with braised meat and pickles.

The city has also become a centre of China's tea-drink industry, with home-grown chains selling milk teas and fruit teas from queues that stretch down the pavement. Hunan produces dark tea in Anhua and the Junshan yinzhen yellow tea grown on an island in Dongting Lake, and rice wine and baijiu appear at celebratory meals.