Hunan Province, 1,419km (882 miles) SE of Chongqing, 707km (440 miles) N of Guangzhou
Changsha is another hazy, congested, modern Chinese city hurrying to divest itself of any architectural trace of its past. But it is the capital of Hunan Province and gateway to one of the Five Sacred Mountains of Daoism and the gorgeous scenic area of the World Heritage Site, Wu Ling Yuan. It is also home to one of the most exciting tomb collections in China -- the Mawang Dui, which dates from the Western Han dynasty.
The city itself -- most often associated with Mao and the model worker Lei Feng -- receives few foreign tourists. While Western visitors are fairly common, most come here not to see sights, but to research dissertations or adopt babies from Changsha's orphanage. In the international hotels, it's not unusual to see a large table of wide-eyed European couples, each cradling a new Chinese baby girl.
