In the Ming Dynasty, there was a master of solving crimes in Guangdong who was upright, resourceful, diligent and honest. His birthplace was the inner lane of Yangzhong Street at the south end of Beijing Road in Guangzhou. This man was regarded as a city god by the people. The unjust deaths were in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Zhou Xin's original name was Zhou Zhixin. Because Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, often called him "Xin", he took "Xin" as his name and changed the character "Zhixin" to "Zhixin". Zhou Xin successively served as governor of Fujian, governor of Beijing, and governor of Zhejiang, and was engaged in criminal, supervisory, and public security work. He is good at prison administration and is known as "cold iron" because of his selflessness, uprightness, courage to speak out, and exposing current abuses.
Zhou Xin is an honest official and never accepts ill-gotten gains. There is a legend about "Zhou Xin hanging goose" among the people in Zhejiang. It is said that someone gave him a roast goose, but his family could not refuse, so they had to accept it. Zhou Xin learned about this after returning home. In order to prevent similar gift-giving incidents from happening again, he hung the roast goose in a conspicuous place at home. As a result, no one dared to give gifts anymore.
Zhou Xin is strict with himself and lives a simple life. Before he became an official, his wife weaved at home to support herself; after he became an official, his wife still weaved. Sometimes she would attend banquets hosted by officials' wives, and she would dress simply, like a peasant woman.
Folk legends about Zhou Xin’s case are mostly spread in Zhejiang. Zhou Xin is known as a "good judge of prisons", and after investigation of the cases he handles, all cases he handles are "fair and fair, without injustice or enmity". Among the people, Zhou Xin is known as a judge "good at deciding suspicious cases" and is deeply loved by the people. Literary works such as Feng Menglong's "The Complete Works of Taking the Powerful Tiger Mountain by Wisdom", Huang Yu's "Shuanghuai Chronicles", Zhang Dai's "Dream of the West Lake" and other literary works contain many records of Zhou Xin's conclusion of the case.
Thanks to Zhou Xin’s efforts, the local prison was almost empty, the people stayed open at night, and even the three-foot-tall children were singing Zhou Xin’s stories of virtue. "Hangzhou Prefecture Chronicles" listed Zhou Xin as a "famous eunuch" and praised him as "a shrewd and submissive man, as smart as a god, who took it as his own duty to stir up turmoil and promote purity, uphold justice, plant good and eliminate evil".
Zhou Xin was framed by the powerful and tortured, but he still insisted on governing evil and evil as his official rule. In the end, he angered the Ming Dynasty and was executed in vain. He was killed by the Ming Dynasty. Before he died, he still shouted: "Live as a straight minister, die as a straight ghost!" Later, when the truth about Zhou Xin's unjust case came to light, Zhu Di also felt regretful.
After Zhou Xin's death, his deeds were widely circulated among the people. In Zhejiang, where he once served as an inspector, the people even regarded him as a city god and worshiped him for generations. From then on, Zhou Xin gradually became the city god worshiped by the people of Zhejiang.