Gueiren

Gueiren, My Hometown.

Gueiren, situated in the south of Tainan County, is an early-developed region. The town was primarily populated by Sirayans (西拉雅人), one of the lost aboriginal tribes dwelling in plain areas. The civilized development was directed by Dutch colonists and Chinese settlers. Till now, the population of Gueiren ranked fourth among 31 regions in Tainan County. Moreover, Gueiren remains a proper distance from downtown Tainan; thus, the town features both the convenience of city life and tranquility of countryside.

As an early-developed region, Gueiren was named in accordance to a fascinating history traced back to the Kingdom of Zheng (鄭氏王朝, 1662-1683). The Prime Minister Chen Yonghua (陳永華) set a Confucian Academy (書院) in Baosi (保西村). Gueiren revived its name from the motto: “The world shall follow the doctrine of rén” (「天下歸仁焉。」)

In the past, early-developed Gueiren was comparatively more prosperous than neighboring regions; as a result, the town’s residents could afford to build comfortable and big red brick houses; other towns’ residents, meanwhile, could only live in grass huts. The standard of living in Gueiren is the envy of outsiders, so Gueiren was nicknamed “hóngwǎcuò” (紅瓦厝), which means “red tiled house” in Taiwanese dialect.

The town never rests in progressing. In the past decades, flower growers gradually shifted their flower nurseries to Chijia (七甲村), Gueiren. Nowadays, the town has been the biggest flower producing and marketing centre of Tainan. Flower merchants even set up big flower markets in Tainan City in order to increase the sales volume. Besides, Gueiren also produces high quality sugar-apples (or sweetsop, “shijia” in Chinese). They are so big that you can’t hold them properly; so delicious that your mouse waters when sniffing the smell; so tasty that you may easily consume dozens of them. However, the producing quantity is much smaller than Taitung (台東) so it doesn’t fame extensively. Sugar-apple production of Gueiren isn’t enormous, but exquisite.

Gueiren is also one of the traffic centres of Tainan. The Tainan Station of Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) is located in the south of the town. This causes an extremely fast development to Gueiren recently. The cost of lands and houses rise in few years. New constructions pop up everywhere. Some people even boast Gueiren as “the sub-downtown of Tainan”.

Time brings great changes to Gueiren, from a wide field to a thriving town; from a farming village to a traffic central. But something never changes -- here, is my hometown.


source material:《歸仁典籍》（2001, 歸仁鄉公所出版）

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這是上週英文作業的作文，我自認為寫得很棒。
它的分數是18，滿分20。老師選了兩份唸給全班聽，這是其中一份。

大概因為普通班裡沒有幾篇好文章，分數才會相較而言比較高。自以為很好而打上來真是見笑了。
（話說這位英文老師也教資優班，其他老師不會太常給同學作文作業。）

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