Survivors of the 12.16 Haiyuan earthquake

Dong Shanzheng, a survivor in Xi'an Township, Haiyuan County, said, "The mountains in Wanjiashui have merged. The two mountains have merged together. There are no sheep or people left." 95-year-old Ma Chenghu lives in On the edge of Haiyuan County, Ningxia, he has lived here all his life, but the house has changed from a cave dwelling to a bungalow. More than a hundred meters away is the mass grave site of the 1920 Haiyuan Earthquake. After 90 years of wind and rain erosion, a series of continuous graves can still be vaguely seen. Ma Chenghu, who has never moved elsewhere, is like the last gravekeeper of the world's largest earthquake in the 20th century.

“My grandfather was beaten to death, and my uncle was beaten to death.” When interviewed by a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily, Ma Chenghu’s memory of the catastrophe he experienced when he was five years old only ends here. His family of five members, Two people died due to the earthquake. This major earthquake with Haiyuan as the epicenter killed more than half of the population of Haiyuan County. The earthquake affected a wide range of areas, with Haiyuan and Guyuan in southern Ningxia, Jingning, Huining, Jingyuan, Tongwei and Weiyuan in central and northern Gansu, and western Shaanxi being the most severely affected.

"How big this earthquake is, you will know after I tell you a few phenomena." Guo Zengjian, former director of the Lanzhou Institute of Seismology of the China Earthquake Administration, told Nandu reporters that affected by the Haiyuan earthquake, the waves on the Baltic Sea surface Floating up to tens of centimeters, both transverse and longitudinal waves of seismic waves passed through the center of the earth. Instruments in Tokyo, Japan, which were not very sensitive at the time, also detected that the seismic surface waves circled around the earth and then came back. "It turns out that It is said that more than 230,000 people died, and some said that more than 200,000 people died, but the latest research results are that more than 270,000 people died. "

The relief after the earthquake also has clear implications. Traces of the times. "Because China was in the middle of a warlord war at the time, there was no effective disaster relief. Many people in Haiyuan were buried in mass graves, and several people were buried in one grave." Liu Gang, director of the Haiyuan County Earthquake Bureau, told Nandu reporters that the descendants of the victims in Haiyuan that year, It has also migrated to surrounding provinces. Every year on December 16, thousands of worshipers from Gansu, Qinghai, Shaanxi and other places in Ningxia will flock to the mass graves.

But outside Haiyuan, this disaster, which had a death toll exceeding the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in Japan and the 1976 Great Tangshan Earthquake in China, is not known to more people. When Wenchuan and Yushu suffered earthquakes one after another, the Haiyuan Earthquake that had been buried for a long time was once again unearthed and became a specimen for the people of the country to pay homage to and examine.

Under the leadership of the Ningxia Autonomous Region Government, the Haiyuan Earthquake Museum under construction will hold an opening ceremony tomorrow, the 90th anniversary of the Haiyuan Earthquake. Nandu reporters saw at the scene that the interior decoration of the museum was still in intensive progress and the exhibition installation had not yet been carried out. Liu Gang said that an academic seminar on the Haiyuan Earthquake will be held and imams will be invited to hold a prayer ceremony at the mass graves.

"The two mountains came together, and there were no sheep or people left."

"On December 16, 1920, at about 8 o'clock in the evening, in some parts of China Some anomalies have been observed in the city and its neighboring countries. It cannot be said that Chengdu, Daming, Shanghai and Haiphong are very close to each other. You must know that it is about 1,200 kilometers from Chengdu to Daming, and about 1,900 kilometers from Haiphong to Shanghai. However, in the above mentioned. At that moment, in the French Consulate in Chengdu, in the Jesuit Mission in Daimyo, in the British Consulate in Shanghai, and in the Observatory in Haiphong, all the clocks suddenly stopped in these cities and in many other settlements, as people sitting at dinner tables suddenly saw. , the chandelier began to swing, and later I learned other things. In Banxia, ??north of Daimyo, three chatting missionaries suddenly felt nauseous. They felt that the floor began to sway like the deck of a ship. In a place 1,250 kilometers away from the China Sea, housewives walking to the market suddenly felt seasick. Residents in Beijing and Tianjin also felt the same..." This is "1920" written by an unknown Soviet writer after the Haiyuan earthquake. China, the Catastrophe the West Ignores".

As researcher Guo Zengjian said, almost the entire world has felt the impact of earthquakes. More relevant to Nandu readers, the earthquake was also very strong off the coast of Shantou. A passenger ship "Devanha" of the British P and O Company sailing from Shanghai to Hong Kong felt a strong vibration like an earthquake when it reached the sea off Shantou. "The captain thought that the ship might have hit the submerged drifting objects, but after the ship docked at the Hong Kong pier, he checked the ship's shell and was surprised to find that the entire hull was intact, and then he thought that it might be an earthquake. "(According to the earthquake record of Xujiahui Observatory "Overview and Commentary of the Great Earthquake of December 16, 1920")

Different from the false alarm episode thousands of miles away, the people at the center of the earthquake At this time, he was going through the cruel test of life and death. Feng Zhilu, a survivor of Gongbei in Jiucaiping, Haiyuan County, described to the documentary crew of "Walking in the Mountains" in Ningxia a few years ago, "The old people said that the time and the earth shook... Our place shook the mountain mouth and threw it down. There are such wide openings in the valleys. The mountains collapsed where people were sitting," Dong Shanzheng, another survivor from Xi'an Township, Haiyuan County, also said, "The mountains in Wanjiashui are closed. When the two mountains merged together, there were no more sheep or humans.

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In the 5th issue of the National Geographic magazine in 1922, there was a report on “Walking in the Mountains” co-authored by Krause and McCormick, which described the Haiyuan Earthquake. Several phenomena occurred: mountains moving at night, landslides like falling waterfalls, large cracks that sank houses and camels, and everything that swept the village into the rising sea of ??soft earth...

“The Great Haiwon Earthquake is currently rated at 8.5 magnitude, and it was also rated at 8.6 magnitude in the past. "Guo Zengjian, former director of the Lanzhou Institute of Seismology of the China Earthquake Administration, said that the earthquake created more than 200 kilometers of fault zones locally, and a lake even moved several kilometers due to the tilt of the ground. The hillsides with loess soil were shaken into powder, forming loess flows. , because most of the local residents lived in cave dwellings, the casualties were even more serious.

In 1958, the Institute of Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences sent six comrades including Guo Zengjian to form an earthquake expedition team to conduct an on-the-spot investigation of the Haiyuan earthquake. A reporter from Nandu recalled that one of the stories he remembered most was that when the earthquake hit, it was already dark. Because there were no electric lights and there were even few oil lamps, many people stayed at home and the entrances to the cave dwellings were collapsed and blocked by the earthquake. Death. There was a cave dwelling that was later dug up by fellow villagers. It was found that it was not completely destroyed. A man was lying on the table, suffocating due to lack of air. He seemed to be drinking water before he died. There was something like oil in a bowl on the table. , like vomit in a human stomach.

The casualties were huge. The "News" reported on April 3, 1921, "Half of the county collapsed, and Haiyuan County, Gansu Province was under the jurisdiction of Gansu Province at that time. ) Feng Junhanying, a student in Beijing, received a letter from his family: "On the evening of the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, an earthquake hit our hometown particularly hard. All the houses in the city were flattened, and nine out of ten people were killed or injured. My Huayawan Villa was completely destroyed, and there were landslides. The earth cracked and the mountains and rivers changed... All of my family of more than 40 people, except my father and your grandmother, were destroyed. The houses were destroyed and nothing was left. The total number of people killed and injured in the county was over 60,000...'"

"Livestock died and were scattered, and wolves and dogs also came out to eat people."

According to the earthquake disaster survey form of "China People's Daily" in March 1921, the death toll in Haiyuan County was about 45,000 More than 70,000 livestock were crushed to death, and houses collapsed on 8/10. Half a year later, Weng Wenhao and Xie Jiarong submitted an official document "submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the State Council" and determined the death toll in Haiyuan County to be 7.3 There are more than 10,000 people, accounting for about 59% of the total population of Haiyuan County.

The second most severely affected area was Guyuan County. The official death toll reported in 1921 was more than 40,000 people. In 1958, when Guo Zengjian and others went to Guyuan for earthquake investigation, they could still see many earthquake relics: the thick brick city wall was still there, and the south city gate was engraved with the characters "Zhen Qin Gate" (now the city wall has been destroyed). Demolished), the Dong Fuxiang Shinto Monument and Pavilion of Dong Fuxiang in the county were cut into two sections. The upper section and the lower section cracked but did not collapse, and the lower section reversed its direction.

In addition to Haiyuan and Guyuan, the death toll in five other counties, including Huining, Longde, Tongwei, Jingyuan and Jingning, all exceeded 10,000.

After the big earthquake on December 16, aftershocks continued, and the weather suddenly turned cold. "On the seventeenth day (aftershocks) continued all night, and at eight o'clock a strong wind arose, the only one seen in history. Countless people and livestock froze to death. The ground roared like thunder, and the sound was extremely dangerous. On the eighteenth day the wind stopped, and the sky and the earth became dark. The earth roared first and then moved five times, all of which were light. On the 19th, there were eight major tremors, and on the 20th, there were 11 major tremors and 12 minor tremors..." The aftershocks and post-earthquake weather conditions were recorded in detail in the Volume 1 issue of "Xinlong" on the 24th. Among them, a heavy snowfall in Haiyuan, Guyuan and other counties froze to death many homeless people.

Xie Jiarong, who visited the disaster area in 1921, also mentioned in an article that this major earthquake that occurred in winter caused the victims to be "displaced and without food and clothing, so they died not only from the earthquake, but also from the earthquake." Although emergency relief was sent from various places, transportation was difficult and it often took several days to arrive, so it was really too late to help."

The "Journal of Geosciences" at that time reported in "A Brief Account of the Shaanxi-Gansu Earthquake" that after the disaster, the people "had no clothes, no food, no shelter, and were displaced in miserable conditions that were unbearable to see and unbearable to hear... Displaced for one day, In the severe cold, people endure the cold and hunger, sleep in the open, crawl on their knees to help the injured, and cry all over the fields. Not only are they starving, but livestock are dying and scattered, and wolves and dogs are out to eat people."

Under the shadow of death, there is also the beginning of new life. Guo Zengjian said that when he went on an inspection trip in 1958, he heard someone say that his mother gave birth to him in a pile of wheat straw.

Before the tentacles of public power could not reach the earthquake area, the victims relied on private relief to tide over the difficulties. When Guo Zengjian went to Haiyuan and other counties in 1958, he also heard fellow villagers mention that when the earthquake first happened, everyone would share whatever food they had, regardless of you or me. After a few days, there would be a psychological change. , each considers their own future, and can no longer go to other people's residences to eat and drink casually. "In the face of a major disaster, we have a public spirit at first, but later our selfishness takes precedence." Guo Zengjian said.

When the belated government relief finally arrives, the victims who suffer from cold and hunger often risk their lives to get it. Shi Zuoliang, then director of the Public Security Bureau of Guyuan County, once recalled that as soon as two carts of pot cakes shipped from Pingliang arrived in the countryside of Guyuan County, they were surrounded by hungry people who came to beg. The soldiers guarding the pot cakes were also scolded. To retreat, these hungry people "would rather suffer a knife on their necks than leave their carriages to let them go."

“Beijing newspapers at that time couldn’t even figure out the address of the epicenter.”

The Haiyuan earthquake struck suddenly, and the local government offices were also severely damaged. In addition, transportation and communications were inconvenient at the time. It was difficult to organize rescue in time. "It takes several days to ride a horse from Lanzhou to Haiyuan, not to mention that the roads have been damaged. The county government probably only recorded disaster relief in a few places such as Jingning. The other county governments cannot tell clearly. Later, the government also adopted the method of 'relief for work' "We cleared the roads and paid wages to the victims, but they were all small amounts," Guo Zengjian said.

The magistrate of Jingning County at that time was Zhou Tingyuan. After liberation, he served as the director of the Gansu Provincial Literature and History Research Center. According to his own "Chronicles of the Great Earthquake in Jingning County, Gansu Province", in the early morning of the next day after the earthquake, he delivered food from the county warehouse to relieve the victims who had no food. He also purchased clothes from shops to help people who had no clothes to avoid the cold. , he took out tents from the warehouse and built thatched huts to serve as shelter for the victims, and called Lanzhou Hebei Hospital to treat the injured people...

Zhou Tingyuan was not bragging about himself. At that time, the British English newspaper "Zi Linxi" published in China The Daily News once published a report entitled "A very true story of a Gansu county magistrate during the earthquake", using perceptual language to describe Zhou Tingyuan's actions after the earthquake: "The county magistrate there is an energetic and very capable person who is very devoted to the people. It was a real blessing... People were full of praise for this official. When the earthquake came, he immediately ordered people to rush out and ask people to leave their houses, then go back indoors and kneel down to pray to God, if God wanted. He was willing to die in exchange for pardoning the masses... After the earthquake, he came out and asked people to immediately rescue the living people buried in the rubble... He also ordered that funds be paid to bury the bodies of the dead and animals to prevent the occurrence of disease. " p>

However, in the face of a major disaster, the local government, which was also hit hard, seemed to be unable to provide relief. "The disaster relief was very slow at that time. In the Beijing newspaper, I couldn't even figure out the address of the epicenter of the earthquake. Foreign countries only mentioned that section. The communication conditions were very poor and it was damaged. It took many days to find out." Guo Zengjian said that Gansu Province at that time Businessmen, students and members of Congress in Beijing appealed to the government for disaster relief and published notices in newspapers. There were many people raising funds at that time, and an emergency fundraising meeting was held in Beijing.

Documents from the Second Historical Archives of China show that Zhang Guangjian, the governor of Gansu Province, wrote to the president in an "urgent emergency" requesting support, but the letter was sent more than a month after the earthquake - 1921. January 20th. Prior to this, on December 29, 1920, Zhang Guangjian and Gansu Provincial Parliament Speaker Wang Shixiang and others called the Ministry of Internal Affairs for help.

"The Beiyang government may also be involved in corruption. Before the earthquake, there was a severe drought in the five provinces of North China. Records said that 500,000 people died. At that time, there was a saying that to save the drought in the five provinces of North China, the government would provide disaster relief. The money was given to international organizations. In early 1921, Gansu people living in Beijing exposed this matter in the "China People's Daily". They wrote well and scolded the Beiyang government. The general idea was that Gansu is a province that receives food for the country. Why did it happen? If there is no rescue, it’s like this place is not on the map,” Guo Zengjian said.

As late as March 19, 1923, Gansu congressman Zhou Zhilun and others still described the tragic situation more than two years after the earthquake in an official letter to the Central Relief Office: "Our province has suffered greatly since the earthquake. Since then, people's livelihood has become increasingly unstable, coupled with frequent hailstorms, droughts, and poor harvests, the counties outside the province have been hit by disasters, and the displacement has spread to the provincial capital. "These congressmen also mentioned that they received letters from their fellow villagers many times. , learned about the tragic situation of the disaster victims in Gansu, and "there was actually a case of selling human flesh buns in Lanzhou." Prices in Lanzhou have skyrocketed, and more than 10,000 people have received porridge in winter. Although donations from all walks of life have also provided clothing, "deaths from hunger and cold are still heard of."

In this letter, a member of Congress from Gansu emphasized that the disaster relief funds that should be allocated to Gansu by the Relief Office were "less than half" and hoped that they would be replenished quickly to show sympathy for the suffering of the people in the disaster areas. Let me tell the people that they will lose their place over time." It can be seen that the central government has withheld funds that should be allocated for disaster relief, which is a serious problem.

The governor of Gansu Province also changed many people in the two years after the Haiyuan earthquake, from Zhang Guangjian, Pan Linggao to Lin Xiguang. "The local government of Gansu also provided disaster relief, but it was said that Governor Zhang Guangjian was corrupt." Guo Zengjian, who visited Haiyuan and other places in 1958, also heard that when the Red Army later passed through the area, they criticized people suspected of embezzling disaster relief funds.

On December 16, 1920, Mr. Lu Xun, who was living in Beijing at the time, recorded this in his diary: "The earthquake stopped in about one minute at night."

In just eight words, what was recorded was the earthquake felt in Beijing at that time - it was only a sensible level and did not cause any damage. These eight characters turned out to be the earliest written record of that earthquake in Beijing.

Mr. Lu Xun would not have thought that what he recorded was the aftermath of a major earthquake thousands of miles away that was transmitted to Beijing.

Almost at the same time, many cities in China also felt the shock.

In Shanghai, the chandeliers and ceiling fans on the ceiling shook for a long time, and the clocks and signal clocks of the British Consulate stopped swinging.

In Hong Kong, a priest named Fucht was lying on a hospital bed. He clearly felt the bed shaking and the gauze moving.

In Banxia (transliteration), north of Daimyo, three missionaries who were chatting suddenly felt nauseous. They felt that the floor began to rock like the deck of a ship...

On the other side of the world, in the United States, abnormal seismic waves were also clearly depicted on seismometers. At that time, 96 seismic stations in the world had similar records.

Guo Zengjian, former director of the Lanzhou Institute of Seismology of the China Earthquake Administration, was one of the first geologists in New China to study the Haiyuan earthquake. He said that at that time, the country with the most rigorous earthquake monitoring and the most advanced technology was earthquake-prone Japan. Seismometers in Tokyo detected seismic surface waves that circled around the Earth, then circled back hours later and were recorded again.

The instruments of the Tokyo Seismological Observatory can amplify seismic waves 12 times and were the most sensitive at the time.

This confirms the power of the Haiyuan earthquake on the other hand.

Seismic waves are detected, and all seismic stations in the world have the same question—where is the epicenter?

According to US media reports at the time, the US Seismological Observatory, based on seismic data, speculated that the epicenter of the earthquake was 3,000 miles away from New York. But it turns out that such speculation underestimates the energy of this earthquake - even if we do not calculate it along the surface of the earth, but take the diameter of the earth directly, the remote Haiyuan is far more than 3,000 miles away from New York.

Relatively accurate estimates of the epicenter are made by the Tokyo Seismological Observatory in Japan and the Xujiahui Observatory in Shanghai.

The Xujiahui Observatory was established by a French church organization and was presided over by Father Galgi at the time. The "Overview and Commentary on the Great Earthquake of December 16, 1920" written by the Xujiahui Observatory on the earthquake recorded in detail the intense monitoring situation that day:

The clocks suddenly stopped and the chandeliers swayed strangely. Compared with ordinary people, they (the missionaries) immediately realized what this meant and hurried into the basement where the seismometer was installed.

The pen tip on the seismograph is drawing a wider and wider curve, and the first wave of early strong fluctuations appeared at 20:9:16. After a slight calm, the north-south magnifying pen on the seismograph was thrown aside by the violent vibration. Father Galgi issued a warning: "Attention! The main peak of the wave is about to arrive."

These waves Arrived at 20:16. Surprisingly, the vibration was so strong that the seismograph was unable to withstand it, and the pen tip fell halfway.

Although not all seismic waves were recorded, the magnitude and location of the earthquake can be inferred.

It takes time for shock waves to surge across the earth. Chai Chizhang, deputy chief engineer of the Ningxia Seismological Bureau, told reporters that seismic waves are divided into three types according to their propagation modes: longitudinal waves, transverse waves and surface waves. Their propagation speeds are different. The seismometer records these types of waves respectively, and then roughly calculates the location and intensity of the earthquake based on their arrival time difference, amplitude and other data. The epicenter ranges of earthquakes predicted by seismometers at different locations will not be exactly the same, and the place where they overlap is likely to be the epicenter.

Shanghai Xujiahui Observatory speculated that the epicenter was northwest of Shanghai, about 1,400 kilometers away.

The Tokyo Seismological Observatory in Japan and the Xujiahui Observatory in Shanghai have very consistent predictions of the epicenter: eastern Gansu (Haiyuan belonged to Gansu Province at the time, so it was also called the Gansu earthquake).