On the seventeenth day of the sixth lunar month in the seventh year of the Kangxi reign period (1668) between seven and nine in the evening, there was a great earthquake.
I was staying at Jixia and drinking by candlelight with my cousin Li Duzhi, when suddenly we heard a sound like thunder coming from the southeast and going northwest. Everyone was shocked and amazed, puzzling about the sound. Soon the table started heaving and wine cups fell over. The rafters, beams, and pillars of the room twisted and creaked. We looked at each other, each face turning pale. It took us awhile to realize it was an earthquake. Each of us hastened outside. Storied buildings and houses were tottering and righting themselves again. The sound of falling walls and collapsing houses, with the cries of children and the wails of women, blended into a seething uproar. People were too dazed and dizzy to stand, so they sat on the ground and were tossed about with the bucklings of the earth. The water in the river was flung over ten feet high in the air. The crowing of cocks and barking of dogs resounded through the streets.
Something like two hours passed before the tremors quieted down slightly. We looked at the street, where unclad men and women were gathered taking frantically to one another, forgetting that they had not gotten dressed. Later I heard that the well at such-and-such a place had caved in and water could not be drawn; the north end of a certain family’s pavilion was now pointing south; Qixia Mountain had split open; and the Yi river had disappeared into a crater an acre across. This was a truly incredible anomaly in the order of nature.
The wife of a man in my district arose one night to urinate. She returned to the house: there was a wolf holding her son in its jaws. The woman immediately fought with the wolf for the child. When the wolf relaxed its jaws for an instant, the woman pulled the child away and held it in her arms. The wolf squatted down and would not leave. The woman let out a great screech, which brought the neighbors running, whereupon the wolf went away. The woman was happy when she got over the shock. She pointed and gesticulated as she described how the wolf had held her child in its jaws and how she pulled it away. This continued for quite a while before she suddenly realized she was not wearing a thread on her body. Off she ran. This situation was the same as after the earthquake, when men and women forgot themselves. How laughable is the heedlessness of panic-stricken people.
Leave a Reply