Leaving Changsha at Twenty-Two, I Wished I Had Been Born Hunanese — However Far I Go, I Will Come Back

Long after leaving Changsha, I keep coming back to one scene. It was a holiday in my junior year, and a few close friends and I went to a comic convention; for dinner we had booked a Changde fish restaurant by the Xiang River. We arrived at the riverbank at dusk. It was April, but Changsha was hot as midsummer — until the green shade of the riverbank and the evening breeze off the water washed it all away, the river flowing quietly north.

We sat on the railing for a long time. Nobody said much. We just let the wind blow, listened to music, watched the river and the passing crowds — and when we got tired, we leaned back and found our best friends' shoulders right there. It was one of the best stretches of time in my life.

When I first came to Changsha at eighteen, I believed it was a city where He Jiong would walk toward you on the street, Wang Han would brush past you on the left, where the Liu Yang River bent around bend after bend, and where everyone ate crayfish and stinky tofu three meals a day.

When I left at twenty-two, I found myself wishing, for a moment, that I had been born Hunanese — because however far I go, I know I will come back.

This is my second hometown. I spent four of my most energetic years getting to know it — and because I knew from the very start that I would eventually leave, I went out of my way to find its most interesting corners.

If you gave the city a human face, Changsha would be a fiery, spirited young woman. Her weather has moods: summers of unbearable heat, winters of freezing rain, springs that cannot decide between sun and showers — in a single day you can live through all four seasons.

And "fiery" is exactly the word for Changsha's food. The world knows Sichuan people love their spice, but Hunan gives as good as it gets. As a Sichuan-born glutton, meeting Changsha was a case of love at long last. The chopped-chili fish head in the grand restaurants, the homestyle stir-fries in the small alleys — heavy with oil and color, arriving at your mouth like a gust of wind. After leaving, I would be seized by sudden cravings: the taro-and-pork-ribs pot at Chuanyan, the white-pepper fish stew near the TV station, the barbecue by Moon Lake, the pickles across from the First Hospital… Changsha's food will always be special to me, because its flavors are mixed with my youth.

Beyond food, the texture of the city hides in corners polished by time. If I could stand still in only one place, I would choose the Hunan Museum. It feels as if two thousand years were folded into a single hall: the famous silk garment from Mawangdui, thinner than a cicada's wing; the T-shaped silk painting tracing the ancient imagination of life and death.

Next to the museum lies Martyrs' Park, where I spent my first two years — riding the Ferris wheel above Nianjia Lake, laughing around the barbecue grills. Then, from some unnoticed day onward, weekends stopped including the place. The people who once rode the bumper cars with you had scattered to every corner of the country.

On the west bank stands Yuelu Mountain — a small mountain, really, but it holds the city's literary soul and its quiet. The maple groves by Aiwan Pavilion carry an autumn air of antiquity; the martyrs Huang Xing and Cai E, sleeping on its slopes, give the ground its weight; and at its foot, Yuelu Academy has stood witness to a thousand years of scholarship. To have such a serene, ancient green mountain in the middle of a roaring city — other cities can only envy it.

Though to us, back then, the real world was the university town at the mountain's foot. The long street outside the Tianma dormitories was forever packed with young people queuing for preserved-plum pork buns and stinky tofu. Cooking smoke, laughter, cheap but earnest little restaurants — together they pieced together the liveliest picture of student life. Where there are schools there is smoke and fire; and where there is smoke and fire, there is time that refuses to grow old.

Just like that — after all these years: Changsha, how have you been?