Qingshui Tang

Qingshui Tang is the former residence of Mao Zedong in Changsha, preserved as a museum complex covering the two-year period from 1921 to 1923 when he lived here with his wife Yang Kaihui and helped establish the early Hunan Communist Party organisation. The house itself is modest — a traditional courtyard dwelling of the type common in early Republican-era Changsha — and the rooms contain period furnishings, photographs, and documents relating to Mao's Changsha years.

The complex includes the site of the first offices of the Hunan Communist Party, established here in 1921 immediately after the party's founding congress in Shanghai. The exhibition provides context for Changsha's central role in the early Communist movement: the city's large working class and its educated reform tradition made it fertile ground for organising. Entry is free; the site is in the eastern part of the city. Combine with a visit to Hunan First Normal University, about 3 kilometres away, where Mao studied from 1913 to 1918.

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A story
The name "Qingshui Tang" — Clear Water Pond — comes from a small pond in the courtyard of what was then a rented house. Mao and his first wife Yang Kaihui lived here from 1921 to 1923 with their young son, and Mao used the house as his base for organising labour unions across Hunan. When Yang Kaihui was arrested and executed by the Nationalist government in 1930, Mao was already in Jiangxi with the Red Army. He never returned to the house.

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