By Shun Ni, published: June 20, 2014
Zhaoyuan is my hometown. The Baidu Encyclopedia tells us that Zhaoyuan (招远) is one of the top one hundred counties in China. It was established as Zhaoyuan County in the year 1131. As of the end of 2013, the population was 565,900, and the county was comprised of four thoroughfares and nine townships. When I was a kid I was a villager in one of the townships.
I’ve always introduced my hometown as “China’s Gold Capital.” On Beijing’s Wangfujing Pedestrian Street (王府井步行街), there’s a huge chunk of gold ore displayed in a glass case for tourists to see. Every time I take a friend for a walk on Wangfujing, I always point proudly to it and say, “Look, from my hometown.” The presence of this rock sometimes gives me the illusion that Zhaoyuan is really close to the capital, merely a simple, straight line.
But, the May 28 homicide that shocked the nation has made it impossible for me to be proud. As Cui Yongyuan has said, this incident has brought shame on the whole nation. Zhaoyuan, the erstwhile glittering golden capital, has in one night become the shame of China.
I can’t sleep at night, not just because of this one incident— there is a lot more. I have left Zhaoyuan for 14 years, and I have been wanting to go back in recently years, dreaming up ideas for returning home and starting a business. But every time I visited, I was beset by profound disappointment.
The last time I had business in Zhaoyuan was when I had a relative go to the neighborhood police station to fill in my marriage status in my household registration (hukou) booklet from blank to “unmarried,”so that I could get some paperwork done in Beijing. My relative went to the police station and,there, he found that the police’s computer records showed that, in 2011, my marriage status was updated as “married!” My relative was dumbfounded: the hukou booklet had been sitting in a drawer at home for years without being touched, when and who altered it?
From:http://chinachange.org/2014/06/21/what-kind-of-a-place-is-zhaoyuan/