The Earthquake
To us, those fateful minutes when the earthquake came were more of a surprise than a terror — one simply did not know what was happening. It was a dark, cold December night, and Mrs. Mann’s guests were gathered round a fire in the sitting-room. Her three-year-old daughter was asleep near-by, and Mrs. Moore’s little boy of five in a room across the courtyard. We had just been talking over a passage in the Bible, and were kneeling in prayer when a strange disturbance began. It seemed to be outside and overhead, like the rumbling of heavy carts, or the thundering toward and then above us of a train on an elevated railway. It was bewildering and almost overpowering, but for the moment we went on praying. Then the floor began to move — and we knew! The parents rushed for their children, while the building rocked and the floor swayed so that it was difficult to reach the door. The court¬ yard, by the time we got out, seemed to be rolling as if a roughish sea were on. Sounds of creaking timbers, falling walls, and that indescribable groaning of great roofs continued. As we stood, an amazed and silent group in the middle of the courtyard, it all went on and on through minutes that seemed interminable. A little more, and the buildings must have come crashing down, burying us beneath the debris — just what was taking place elsewhere. Yet we were calm, strangely calm, and were able to reassure the servants and others who had run out of their rooms in terror. Then gradually the earth under our feet steadied, the deafening roar passed away, and we realised that the worst was over.
It was a little while before we ventured indoors, though the cold outside was dangerous. Many lesser shocks were felt during the night, and it was with thankfulness we saw daylight and were able to get news of our friends across the river. Over there on the exposed hillside the shocks had been more disastrous. The temples facing the bridge were some of them in ruins, and part of the hill had slipped into a valley; but the hospital buildings were intact, though the high walls of courtyards had fallen in several places. There had been loss of life in the city, and of course great alarm, but when accounts began to come in of the distress in other places it seemed as though Lanchow had escaped almost untouched. A few days’ journey north and east the devastation had been appalling. From the south-east also came heartrending accounts of collapsed cave-homes, landslides, and ruined cities, and a death-roll that according to official figures reached two hundred thousand. Hundreds of thousands more were left homeless — farms and animals, grain and clothing gone, everything gone — to face the desperate cold of those high altitudes in mid-winter.
It was a time when all that could be done seemed little to meet the situation. As quickly as possible an Earthquake Relief Committee was organised with Mr. Mann as Chairman. Mr. George F. Andrew was summoned from the coast to become Field Director, and in the next few months a hundred and twenty thousand dollars were laid out in relief works. For it proved that the immediate suffering was not the worst part of the catastrophe. While it was still a question of burying the dead and rescuing survivors, no one had time to notice that the tremendous landslides had blocked up river-beds in many places, and that when the ice began to melt and the spring rains to fall, disastrous floods must be the result. The threatened danger, when it claimed attention, seemed almost too great to cope with. As Dr. Parry found on his way to give surgical help at Tsing-ning-chow, ranges of hills had moved down, burying road, villages, and farmsteads for a mile or so at a stretch, and heaping up soil and stones in valleys until they had literally become hills. In twenty different directions rivers were blocked in this way. Many miles of road and several bridges had to be remade and safe channels cut for the pent-up waters.
Then it was that the presence of missionaries was valued by all classes. They had been the first to see the situation, and to them the officials turned for counsel and help.
“In some places,” Miss Knox wrote from Lanchow in the spring, “the water is already two hundred feet deep, and rising daily. If this were only in valleys it would not so much matter, but where the water encroaches upon a plain the danger to life and property is great. In one district, near Tsinchow, over a thousand people have had to leave their homes.”
Those among the refugees who could work were organised under foreign supervision, and all the money contributed was paid out in wages.
“We have diggings in ten places at present,” was Mr. Andrew’s first report, “and are employing thousands of men. My part consists in giving general oversight. At the place from which I write (Ch’in-ch’iang-ih) we have our greatest task. For here a cutting has to be made over two hundred feet deep and about a mile long.
“What about the men we are employing? Come with me and listen to some of the sad stories. You see that finely-built fellow yonder: he is the sole survivor of a family of seventeen. Farm and lands buried under thousands of tons of soil, he now works on the diggings to earn enough to build up a home once more. Out of this particular digging we had previously removed five bodies, when news went round, one morning, that we had come upon the ruins of another homestead. Soon three more, crushed almost beyond recognition, were unearthed, and one of our men received the remains of his father, mother, and sister.
“Here in our office is a fine young man who has been through one of the leading military schools of China. Besides himself, only two members of his familv are left. Thank God, the divine comfort of the Gospel is softening that sad heart and lifting the bitterness of death which had entered into it.
We have some fine Chinese Christians helping in this work, and as we go our rounds we come to the tent of one of these grand men. Walk reverently here — for this is sacred ground. Within the folds of this tent many weary, sin-laden souls have had the good news brought to them of salvation full and free, and some have accepted it.”
To the terror of the people, earthquake shocks were of frequent recurrence for weeks and even months after the first disaster. In most places no serious damage was done, though in the mountainous region in which Mr. Andrew was working there was further loss of life. Houses fell, and as many as forty people were killed in one of these lesser shocks.
“There is a deep, deep solitude in the mountains to-day,” he wrote, “so deep that it approaches the silence of death. A heavy sense of oppression rests upon the remaining inhabitants of the scattered hamlets. We spend the night in a fair-sized village where, in the early hours of morning, we are awakened by the now well-known roar, like so many express trains rushing on an underground railway — then comes the quake. The house we are in is shaken to its foundations. The whole structure swings and vibrates. But high above the noise of the under¬ ground roll and the shaking and rattling of the building can be heard that terrible cry — once heard, never forgotten — of the terror-stricken inhabitants as they rush from their homes and seek safety in the open.
“What a grand thing to come among these people, serving their material interests to the limit of strength and means, and bringing that glorious gospel of
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Photo by
Dr. G. E. Morrison.
THE LOESS FORMATION
“A part of the great loess formation, which stretches from central Honan almost to Tibet. ... It is characterised by deep vertical cracks which form
perpendicular walls.
To lace page 51.
Redeeming Love which gives comfort in anguish, joy in sorrow, and the deep, deep peace of God which passes understanding.”
The great loss of life in the few minutes of the earthquake must be largely attributed to the character of the loess formation in which the landslides occurred. The chief area of destruction was, roughly speaking, an oval tract of country lying between the Wei and the Yellow Rivers, cut across by the Luh-pan range of mountains — an oval about a hundred miles from east to west and two hundred from north to south. It comprises, as the National Geographic Magazine (American) points out, two distinct types of geological formation.
“The southern half of the oval is, with the exception of the precipitous mountain range, a part of the great loess region which stretches from central Honan almost to Tibet... y The northern half, from Ku-Yiien to the Yellow River, is a rolling alkali plateau of clay and gravel formation, part of the steppes stretching north to Siberia and west to Turkestan. In this district the soil, being brittle, but of firmer texture than the loess, did not slide, but cracked into intricate fissures.
“It was in the loess area that the immense slides out of the terraced hills occurred, burying or carrying away villages, covering level, farmed valley-floors with a debris of un vegetated dust, damming streambeds and turning valleys into lakes.... Here the
1 Loess is a mixture of clay and powdered quartz deposited to an immense depth over vast tracts of northern China. It is characterised by deep vertical cracks which form the perpendicular walls of mud utilised for the excavation of cavehouses, in which the population largely dwells.
Chinese, since their vernacular is devoid of a technical or other term corresponding to ‘ landslide,’ have coined the expression — the only phrase they have for describing what happened — ‘The mountains walked.’”
How literally this took place may be judged by the description of one valley, five miles long, in which seven great landslides buried every living thing except three men and two dogs.
“The only survivors of this valley were saved as by a miracle — a farmer and his two young sons, whose farmstead instead of being buried was caught up on the back of one of the slides, carried half a mile down the valley to where it was diverted by two streams of earth coming from other directions and, as the resultant of the two forces, was pushed another quarter of a mile up a small draw.
“Like all others in the slide zone, the survivors were unaware of the nature of the disaster which had overtaken them until the following morning.... A bitter wind and dust storm, raging at the time, added to the blackness of the night. They say that they heard a tremendous underground roar and felt the shock, which seemed to them to consist of a sickening swing to the north-east and a violent jerk back to the south-west, lasting half a minute. They made all ordinary efforts to save themselves, and between successive tremors following the main shock huddled back into the ruins of their home to await the morning. Not until day dawned and they crawled out to find neighbouring villages obliterated, farm lands carried away or buried, streams blocked and hills of earth towering above them, did they apprehend that the ‘ mountains had walked,’”
In the more northerly region, “where the brittle ground cracked like porcelain,” the sufferings of the people were just as great. With no loess cushion to lessen the force of the shock, whole cities went down like a pack of cards. Caves fell in, burying farm-animals with their owners, and great fissures in the frozen earth swallowed up houses and trains of camels. At Tsingyiian, a Mohammedan city on the Yellow River, half the people were killed and dogs went mad from eating human flesh. From new-made crevasses black water oozed up, covering the ground. Wolves came down from the mountains, and amid the appalling scene robbers were found to prey both upon the dead and the living.
In grateful contrast with such enormities was the devotion of the Tsin-ning-chow Mandarin — the little city which had so much attracted us when we passed through it only ten days before the earthquake. He had been there three years and was beloved by the people. Living simply, he used the money at his command for the establishment of a free hospital, a home for destitute children, a free library, and other undertakings for the good of the district. He had put down gambling, and was tackling opium¬ smoking and foot-binding with energy. “He is indeed a man among ten thousand,” wrote Dr. Parry, who was called to his aid when the earthquake came.
Beside himself with grief and perplexity in those terrible moments, he ordered his soldiers to rush out and call the people from their houses, and returning to his room knelt down and prayed to the Supreme Ruler that his own life might be sacrificed, if need be, to save the city. The walls fell in around him, even striking him as he knelt, but he prayed on. When the worst was over, he felt that he had been spared that he might help the people, who would have been utterly disorganised without him. Though fasting and mourning, he rendered splendid service, seeing to the rescue of those entombed alive, the burial of the dead, and provision of food and clothing for the destitute. He lent out scores of army-tents, while for days he and his family slept on the ground, without shelter of any kind. And he sent to Lanchow to bring the only foreign doctor in the province to the scene of suffering. Over three thousand people were being fed from official granaries, when Dr. Parry and Mr. Seaman arrived, and they found eleven hundred wounded needing attention. As many more had perished, and the city was practically in ruins, but the devotion and courage of both the official, Cheo T’ing-yiien, and his wife were unfailing.
Before long, two experienced lady-missionaries were domiciled amid the ruins of Tsin-ning-chow, living, as an American traveller put it, “in a hovel with earthen floor and a matting roof that would be scorned by well-bred cattle at home,” but rejoicing to be among the people, ministering to their needs and bringing the healing of the Christian message for their hearts.
In every centre where missionaries were found, the distress of the people proved a wonderful
1 Miss Wedicson and Miss Skollenberg are of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission, associated with the C.I.M. A promising work is growing up around them in that stricken city and district, for which they would greatly value the prayers of friends at home. opportunity. Some among the heathen were so much impressed by the power of God that they gave up idol-worship and became inquirers. Many Christians realised as never before the importance of being ready for the coming of the Lord. Mr. Rist wrote from Tsinchow that heathen people had been heard, during the earthquake, calling upon the Lord Jesus to save them. At some of the out-stations under his care there were large attend¬ ances at the services, and not a few outsiders were inquiring the way of life.
It could not but be noticed, also, how generally Christians had been protected in the hour of peril. Very few lives were lost or serious injuries sustained. In one place where a house fell upon a Christian man and his family, the neighbours when they came to search for the bodies were startled to hear a voice calling: “We are all right! Nobody is hurt,”
Instead of being crushed by falling timbers, the brick bed on which parents and children were sleeping had been covered and protected. There was one case in which a Christian woman and her daughter had been killed by the falling of a high house on the roof over their heads. But when the rubbish was removed their bodies were found without any sign of hurt, and with a look of peace, even joy, on their faces. The grandmother had covered the little baby with her arm, and it was quite uninjured.
Wonderful, too, was the escape of Mr. W. Christie and a young companion, members of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, who were on a journey. They had put up at an inn and were retiring for the night when the great shock came. Not waiting to pick up even their outer garments, they rushed into the open, and had hardly got clear of the building when the roof fell, burying everything. It was noteworthy that not a single missionary throughout the province was injured.
But the most remarkable development in connection with the earthquake was one which made the Chinese look upon it almost in the light of a blessing: it put an end to the threatened Mohammedan rebellion. The terrible experiences of former uprisings had taught them that “While heaven slays its hundreds, Moslems massacre their myriads.” It is beyond question that such a rebellion was imminent, and with two to three million Mohammedans in the province, and the military forces largely under their control, it was a serious outlook. And then, in a moment, all was changed, and Mohammedan power and prestige were swept away without hand. For the area of greatest destruction was largely populated by Moslems, and one of their chief religious leaders was entombed with hundreds of his followers. Little was known of the fate of this remarkable man until one of his personal attendants came as a patient under Dr. Parry’s care. This was at Tsin-ning-chow, some three weeks after the earthquake. Ma the Holy or Saintly, as he was called, was the truly great leader of a sect which he had founded. He had a presentiment, it would seem, of coming disaster. Still he went night by night to the big cave used as a mosque to pray for hours. That fateful evening (December 16, 1920) he bathed and dressed early and went to the mosque with his sons and attendants. It is believed that a conference of some sort was being held and that hundreds of Moslem leaders were there with this chief. Whether it had to do with the rebellion or not will never be known, for while the service was going on the earthquake came, the cave fell, and no one escaped.
“His home was in Sa-ku,” wrote Dr. Parry, “a long valley mostly inhabited by Mohammedans. It is said that about ten thousand were buried by the falling of the mountains on both sides, which have filled the valley up level for miles.”
All this means that the attitude of the Moslem population of the province is far less aggressive than it was previously. The danger of rebellion has passed away for the present, and wider opportunities than ever are given for the proclamation of the Gospel. How long this may last we cannot tell.
“Now is the day of opportunity,” wrote one of the missionaries engaged in relief work. “During the quake, mountains and houses were not the only things shaken down. Ancient, deep-seated prejudices were shaken, and the faith of many who believed in gods of man’s manufacture. Now, they drink in the message of God’s Christ. Personally, I feel the need of the hour is for prayer. God has been speaking to me about reaping a harvest here, but the first essential is to prevail in prayer — for only so can the hosts of evil be defeated and the veil lifted from darkened minds.”