Here's a short story:

(CNN) -- Long before Chen Guangcheng became internationally known as a human rights crusader, villagers near his home knew him as the man to go to when they had trouble with local authorities. 

Despite having little formal legal education, Chen began advocating on behalf of villagers in 1996 at the age of 25, according to China Human Rights Defenders, a China-based human rights group. 

Chen has been at the center of a burgeoning international impasse since his dramatic escape last week from the guards who kept him under house arrest in a small village in eastern China. He was confined to his home after serving four years in prison, apparently over his legal advocacy for what he called victims of abusive practices such as forced abortions by China's family planning officials. 

Fellow activists say he made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he remains as the United States and China try to sort out the future for Chen, who has sought to call attention to the practice of forced abortions and sterilizations in China. 

Yet he never sought out to be a rabble-rouser, said New York University law professor Jerome Cohen, who first met Chen when the activist traveled to the United States as part of a State Department program in 2004. 

"You got the feeling you were in the presence of some Chinese equivalent of Gandhi or something," Cohen said. "He had this gentle but steely moral force." 

Chen was born in 1971 in Dongshigu, a small farming village in eastern Shandong province, more than 400 kilometers (248 miles) from Beijing.  (End of story)

Provide your best guess for the following question. Give ONLY the guess, no other words or explanation.

For example:

Guess: <most likely guess, as short as possible; not a complete sentence, just the guess!>

Here are a few examples of questions and answers:

Question: Who escaped?
Guess: Chen

Now answer the following question in the same format.

Question: From where?

a small village in eastern China.