Death of Hometown: Political Elites and the Fate of Native Place in Modern China

Why has there been a widespread sense of homelessness in China in the recent decades? Can native place still be called home in the twenty-first century?

One man's story from Anyang - a county in the North China Plain - may hold answer to these intractable conundrums.

Anyang was established as a county when China became a unified empire in the 3rd Century BCE. For centuries, the local people made the county their home, where they buried their ancestors and dwelled with their kinsfolk. Talented sons of gentry families could pursue careers in the larger world through civil service, but it was in Anyang that their civil-examination-based careers began, and eventually it was here that they returned to for rest.