Time may heal direct, bleeding wounds, but it can only obscure the hate directed towards occupiers. Hengyang was founded towards the end of the Warring States era, emerging as an area of strategic importance. It became the capital for regional administration within Hunan under the Tang Dynasty, and was renamed as a new polity was founded in Hunan during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. From there, it became a thorn in the side of local occupiers, being the site of uprisings against Yuan rule in opposition to altered grain quotas.

The city continued to develop through the following centuries, often renamed to suit the objectives of local rulers. By the turn of the twentieth century, it developed into a major commercial hub, prospering as business moved inland. However, as the Second Sino-Japanese War dragged on, Hengyang became a frontline city, and the site of perhaps the conflict's fiercest fighting. Seeing significant pressure from incendiary weaponry and poison gas, the city itself was practically levelled by fighting, ending the war as little more than a disorganised pile of rubble.

Little has changed. The streets themselves have been restored, the fruits of later efforts made to reconstruct the city, with significant investment poured into the city to restore it as a shining jewel of pan-Asianism. What business still lingers in the city continues to thrive, whilst the Reorganised National Government of China places significant investment and resources into the city in an effort to maintain it as a bastion against other regional polities. However, such bribery cannot eliminate the disgust that those living in Hengyang feel towards the regime, and as they rankle, they dream of liberation from the yoke of the puppet regime.