Changsha, on the Xiang River in Hunan, is a 3,000-year-old city that behaves young. It keeps a Han-dynasty lady in glass, a thousand-year academy still taking students, and the young Mao Zedong's favorite swimming beach — while running the loudest nightlife, the spiciest street food and the most devoted milk-tea queues in central China. It is also the natural first stop for Hunan's great loop: the sacred mountain of Hengshan, the riverside lanes of Fenghuang and the pillars of Zhangjiajie all fan out from here by high-speed rail.
