1556 Shaanxi earthquake
gigatos | January 2, 2022
Summary
The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake or Huasian earthquake (simplified Chinese: 华县大地震, traditional Chinese: 華縣大地震, pinyin: Huáxiàn Dàdìzhèn) or Chiatsing earthquake (Chinese: 嘉靖大地震, pidgin: Jiājìng Dàdìzhèn), is the deadliest earthquake in recorded history. According to imperial records, about 830,000 people died.
The epicentre of the Saaansi earthquake was located in the Wei River valley in Saaansi Province, near Huashian (now Huachou District of Weinan), Weinan and Huayin. In Huachou, every building and house was demolished, killing more than half of the city”s residents, with the death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands. The situation in Weinan and Huayin was similar. In some areas, cracks 20 metres deep opened up in the earth. Destruction and death were everywhere, affecting places up to 500 kilometres away from the epicentre. The earthquake also caused landslides, which contributed to the huge number of deaths. The earthquake occurred during the reign of Emperor Chiatsing of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, in the Chinese historical record, this earthquake is often referred to as the Great Chiatsing Earthquake.
Modern estimates, based on geological data, give the earthquake a magnitude of about 8 Mw on the seismic moment scale and XI (catastrophic damage) on the Merkali scale, although more recent discoveries have suggested that it was more likely to be of magnitude 7.9 Mw. While it was the deadliest earthquake and the third deadliest natural disaster in history, there have been earthquakes of significantly higher magnitudes. After the earthquake, aftershocks continued several times each month for half a year.
In the annals of China it is described in this way:
In the winter of 1556, there was a devastating earthquake in the provinces of Sha”ansi and Sansi. In the district of Huasian, various misfortunes occurred. Mountains and rivers changed places and roads were destroyed. In some places, the ground suddenly rose and formed new hills or sank sharply and new valleys were formed. In other places, a stream erupted in an instant or the ground broke up and new gullies appeared. The huts, formal houses, temples and city walls suddenly collapsed.
The earthquake badly hit many columns of the Forest of Columns. Of the 114 classical stone kaichengs, 40 were broken by the earthquake.
Scholar Chin Kenta survived the earthquake and recorded details. One conclusion he drew was that “at the beginning of an earthquake, people indoors should not come out immediately. Just duck and wait. Even if the nest has collapsed, some eggs may remain intact.” The shaking reduced the height of the Little Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi”an by three levels.
Millions of people lived at that time in artificial yellow lime caves in high cliffs in the area of the Yellowstone Plateau. Yellowstone is the calcareous muddy soil that windstorms have deposited on the plateau over the centuries. The soft yellow calcareous clay formed over thousands of years due to wind blowing mud into the area from the Gobi Desert. Yellow clay is a very erosion-prone soil that is susceptible to wind and water forces.
The Yellowstone Plateau and its dusty terrain cover almost all of the provinces of Sanshi, Saansi and Kansu, as well as parts of other provinces. Much of the population lived in dwellings called yodongs on these rocks. This was the major factor in the very high number of deaths. The earthquake collapsed many caves and caused landslides, which destroyed even more.
The Portuguese Dominican monk Gaspar da Cruz, who visited Guangzhou later in 1556, heard about the earthquake and later mentioned it in the last chapter of his book A Treatise of China (1569). He viewed the earthquake as a possible punishment for the sins of men and the great comet of 1556 as possibly the sign of this destruction (as well as perhaps the sign of the birth of the Antichrist).
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