CHANGSHA, capital city of Hunan Province in south central China, is not exactly on the tourist trail. Not many foreign tourists go there and the few who do are most likely to be those interested in the history of the CCP or admirers of Mao Zedong.

Perhaps it is partly due to the hot and fiery Hunanese cuisine which heats up the temperament of the Hunanese, but many of China’s early communist revolutionaries hail from Hunan province: Liu Sha