What is "xiang"

Xiang or Hsiang may refer to:

• Xiang River, river in South China
• Xiang Island , a former island in the Yangtze estuary now forming part of Chongming Island in Shanghai
• Hunan, abbreviated in Chinese as 湘 Xiāng, a province of China
• Xiang Chinese, a group of Chinese varieties spoken in Hunan
• The Xiang Army raised in Hunan by Zeng Guofan during the Qing dynasty
• Townships of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan
• Xiang (surname), three unrelated surnames: and (both Xiàng) and (Xiāng)
• Xiang (place), the site of Hong Xiuquan's destruction of a Chinese idol early in the Taiping Rebellion

Xiang was a place in Guangxi province where there was an idol to Gan. Feeling that Gan was an embodiment of immorality and other evils, Hong Xiuquan, Lu Liu and Feng Yunshan destroyed the idol and desecrated the temple to Gan in the 1840s.

Xiang later became one of the early bases of the Taiping.

Xiang is the pinyin romanization of three Chinese surnames: , Xiàng and Xiāng .

Notable people with this surname include:

• Xiang Bo noble of the Chu state
• Xiang Yu prominent warlord in the late Qin dynasty.
• Xiang Chong general and politician of the state of Shu Han
• Xiang Huaicheng
• Xiang Hantian
• Xiang Huaqiang, better known as Charles Heung
• Xiang Jingyu
• Xiang Liang
• Xiang Rong
• Xiang Shengmo
• Xiang Zhongfa
• Xiang Zhejun
• Xiang Zhuang
• Ning Xiang , Chinese American acoustics expert