March 3, 2018 (last updated) | Peter Radocchia
Anhua (安化) is a mountainous county in Hunan, China.
Historically, it has been relatively poor compared to the cities and coastal areas of China. Unlike some of the other mountainous areas of the province, the inhabitants speak a variant of the Xiang dialect more typical of lowland areas in Hunan.
Anhua was once thickly forested with great, old-growth trees. In the late 50s most of the trees were cut down. The forests began to come back in the late 80s, and now the mountains are well forested again.
The villages and towns have changed considerably in the space of a generation. Once there were only a few roads connecting the major towns. Many villages were only accessible by foot. Since the mid 90s, many new roads have been built. What were once foot paths are now paved roads, and some trips that used to take all day can now be made in an hour or less.
Here is Anhua on Google Maps.
Below are some Chinese maps that I gathered using Baidu image search, and arranged them here to help get a sense the regional geographic context. I actually have a very poor sense of the geography of Hunan, and this exercise helped me understand it better, specifically how Anhua is actually the valley between the mountains, just before the Zi River empties into Dongting Lake and Dongting Lake into the Yangtze.
