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Friday, October 5, 2012

Huang Xing Statue at a Pedestrian Street in Changsha

Earlier, I asked if anyone could identify a city in China based on a nighttime view of its most popular pedestrian street. Here is a daytime view:

north end of the South Huang Xing Road Commercial Pedestrian Street (黄兴南路步行商业街) in Changsha

Unlike previous attempts involving Shanghai/Munich and Huizhou, we have a winner. Congrats to Eric Beckers in Zoetermeer, Netherlands, for being the first to correctly identify the city as Changsha -- the capital of Hunan province.

There was less success in answering the bonus question -- the identity of the statue seen in the center of the photo. Of course, the statue would be rather difficult to identify solely through looking at it in the photo I provided. I assumed prior knowledge about Changsha or some research would be required to figure it out. Guesses included Mao Zedong, Lei Feng, Sun Yat-sen, Deng Xiaoping, and "an ancient sage". The first two were the most common. I suspect some people were misled by the existence of a Lei Feng memorial & statue elsewhere in Changsha and some peculiar inaccuracies in English online about the above statue's identity (such as a Flickr photo identifying it as "one of the famous Chinese philosophers from the early 1900's").

For more help, here is a closer view of the statue:

statue of Huang Xing (黄兴) at the Huang Xing Road Commercial Pedestrian Street in Changsha

If that is not enough (and it was not enough for at least one Chinese college student who was standing in front of the statue), a plaque in Chinese at the bottom of the pedestal makes it clear. Unfortunately, most of the plaque is currently covered by shrubs:

plaque with Huang Xing's name

Huang Xing (黄兴):
(born Oct. 25, 1874, Changsha, Hunan province, China—died Oct. 31, 1916, Shanghai), [was a] revolutionary who helped organize the Chinese uprising of 1911 that overthrew the Qing dynasty and ended 2,000 years of imperial rule in China.
Huang's story is rather compelling. A condensed and easy to read version of it can be found at Encyclopædia Britannica here.

It may now come as no surprise that the statue is found at the north end of Changsha's South Huang Xing Road Commercial Pedestrian Street (黄兴南路步行商业街). Sometimes it all fits together.

That was fun, and I appreciate all of the responses. I will do this again at an opportune moment. As I mentioned before, several upcoming posts will be inspired by my time in Zhuhai, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou. As you may suspect, Changsha will be thrown into the mix as well. I also plan to return to some technology & UX related themes.

2 comments:

  1. That intersection looks busy. Statue is attractive but I wish they would clear back the bushes so people would KNOW what the statue is. W.C.C.

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    1. Yes, it's a busy intersection and can get quite a bit busier than the moment in the photo. It's not clear in the photo, but fwiw there is ample space between the statue and the road. And I would love to know whether covering the name with the bushes, which are in numerous pots surrounding the statue, was an accident.

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