I come from Gansu province in the northwest of China. I lived and grew up in a small town until I went to college. It's really a small place, but it's also the most important industrial town in China. Most of the people here, like my parents who worked for an iron factory, are working for government-owned heavy industries. With society and the economy rapidly changing, though, those industries have started to decline, and it's a big burden for the government to continue supporting them. Some of them have started to transform to become stock companies, while some of them have simply collapsed, so the inhabitants here have had to move to other nearby cities to get new jobs. As a result, my small hometown seems like it has gotten even smaller. It seems that the younger generation would prefer to live and study in a bigger city, while the older one doesn't seem to have any choice--they have to leave to earn a living. My hometown is like a well-known and well-liked old man, maybe it will gradually fade away in the future, however, I will always love and remember it fondly because too many beautiful memories happened there.