Tourist attractionChangsha · CN
Orange Isle (Juzizhou)
Orange Isle (Juzizhou) is the long, narrow green ribbon of land lying in the middle of the Xiang River in Changsha, squeezed between Yuelu Mountain to the west and the old city to the east. Called the 'First Island in China,' it is the country's largest inland river isle—roughly five to six kilometres long but never more than a few hundred metres wide—and it is best known as the '洲头' (headland) where, in the deep autumn of 1925, a 32-year-old Mao Zedong stood facing the north-flowing river and wrote the immortal lyric 'Qinyuanchun · Changsha.' That single poem made a sandbar world-famous. Today the isle is a national 5A scenic area and the beating heart of Changsha's 'mountain-water-island-city' landscape, free to enter and easy to reach by metro. The point named 桔子洲头 on the map is the island's symbolic southern tip: the place where a white marble monument carries Mao's own calligraphy of the words '桔子洲头,' where the colossal Young Mao Zedong sculpture gazes out over the water, and where most visitors begin a walk that threads groves, pavilions and river views along the whole length of the isle.