Far from being supersititious the signs from nature should have been
heeded. After the Tangshan earthquake China dodged two more
earthquakes by heeding natural phenomenon. It didn't work for the
third earthquake. By then China invested in modern earthquake
detection technology. Whatever, the absence of natural phenomenon
observations and the failure of modern instruments to predict the
third earthquake resulted in a lot of minds not to pay too much
reliance on either method. That is a mistake. Natural phenomenon as
warning signs should be taken seriously. All it need is for the
people to stay outdoors and do whatever they normally do. Loss of
production, if nothing happens, can always be made up. Lives lost is
gone forever.
============================================
(from Rick Martin's blog.)
Update: One of my Chinese friends just sent me a message: "People in
Sichuan saw thousands of frogs crawling in the street, which is
believed may mean something terrible." He's right. Elliot Ng points to
the following picture on ifgogo:
http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/littleredblog/post.htm?id=63003605&scid=hm_bl
Do see the picture of frogs milling on the curbside. This is
convincing proof to me that they sensed something disastrous to come.
============================================
Superstition Meets the Web, Stinging Chinese Authorities
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: May 16, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/asia/16rumors.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
CHENGDU, China - Can earthquakes be predicted, their destructive
impact forewarned?
Most scientists would say no. But if some insistent Chinese bloggers
are to be believed, nature provided enough warning to have saved many
of those who perished Monday.
In the days before the deadly earthquake shook much of mountainous
Sichuan Province, their stories go, ponds inexplicably drained, cows
flung themselves against their enclosures and swarms of toads invaded
the streets of a town that was later decimated by the quake. "Why did
the government ignore the signs?" asked a writer on one chat room.
"Did they not care?"
Some bloggers have lobbed more pointed accusations, saying that alerts
by a local seismology bureau were brushed off by provincial officials.
The claim has been largely debunked, but that has not stopped the
spread of rumors and tall tales, some of which are proving nettlesome
to the ruling Communist Party as it grapples with China's most
calamitous disaster in a generation.
At a government news conference on Tuesday, carried live on state
television, when a re****ter asked about the rumors, the broadcast
quickly switched to stock footage of rescue efforts. When it returned
to the news conference, the questions had become benign.
Later that day, officials announced the arrest of four people for
spreading quake-related rumors on the Web and said they would be
punished, although they did not describe the punishment or nature of
the rumors.
Lest any doubters remain, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency,
ran an article on Wednesday featuring Zhang Xiaodong, a scientist at
the China Earthquake Networks center, who said seismologists, contrary
to popular belief, could not accurately predict natural disasters. "We
haven't passed the test of earthquake forecasting," he said.
Here in China, the belief in omens and ****tents, often rooted in
ancient cosmology, is widespread, even by the worldly and well
educated. This is a culture, after all, that cherishes lucky numbers,
eschews sounds that can be misconstrued as the word for death and
places great value in feng shui, the practice of arranging furniture
and buildings just so, to bring happiness and good health. Some of the
traditions are newer than others: It is the rare taxi driver in China
who does not keep an image of Chairman Mao dangling from the rear-view
mirror as a talisman against danger.
Even the Communist Party, which ostensibly swept away the opiate of
the m***** with its 1949 revolution, decided to inflect the Beijing
Olympics with as many lucky eights as possible: starting them on Aug.
8, or 8-08-2008, with a start time of 8:08 p.m.
While there is no way to know for sure, the current leader****p may
have one eye on Chinese history, which has long linked political power
to the divine, a concept known as the mandate of heaven. Emperors
served with the blessing of the heavens, according to such thinking,
and those who turned corrupt or insensitive to the needs of the people
were drummed out of power after a spate of natural catastrophes.
Whether the calamities signaled the end of a government or helped
embolden their usurpers is open to interpretation.
Most ordinary Chinese can provide an earful about the "curse of 1976,"
the year that saw the death of Mao, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and Gen.
Zhu De, the head of the Red Army. It was also the year an earthquake
struck the northeastern city of Tangshan, killing at least 240,000
people - a quarter of its population - in one of the deadliest natural
disasters in modern history.
David Neil Schmid, a professor of Chinese religion at North Carolina
State University who is visiting scholar at Zhejiang University, said
it was worth noting that the seismometer was invented by the Chinese
in 132 A.D. as a way to detect tremors that might spell the end of a
ruler's reign. Successive dynasties employed a master of omens who
would record and interpret floods, famines and other disasters.
"Reading and understanding these aberrations in the natural world has
always been a central aspect of Chinese culture," he said.
For China, 2008, while thanks to its eight is ostensibly a lucky year,
has already brought a spate of unfortunate events. The year began with
a huge winter storm that stalled the nation's rail system, stranding
millions before the Chinese New Year. Then came the rioting in Tibet.
The government crackdown that followed has prompted a torrent of
protest and international ill will that has fouled what was meant to
be a "harmonious" Olympics period. In recent weeks, the authorities in
Beijing have been struggling with other calamities: an intestinal
virus epidemic that started in central China and has killed 42
children and a train collision that killed 72 passengers in eastern
China.
Yiyan Wang, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney
in Australia, said that even if the Communist Party leader****p did not
subscribe to superstitions, it was aware that many of its citizens
did. The well-publicized voyage of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to the
disaster zone hours after the quake could be interpreted as sound
public relations or, perhaps, an acknowledgment of age-old fears. "The
government knows many Chinese will see the quake as a sign that things
are out of balance," she said.
It is the story of the invading toads that seems to have gained the
most traction, at least on the Internet. It did indeed occur, in some
form, in Mianzhu two days before the quake hit, and many residents
reacted with terror, believing it to be a harbinger of bad things to
come. In an interview on Sichuan television just before the quake, the
director of Mianzhu's forestry bureau tried to calm residents by
saying the mass migration was a normal part of toad breeding season.
The interview, posted on the Internet, has been sparking a torrent of
angry remarks. At least 3,000 people have died in Mianzhu, and
officials say another 4,500 are missing.
"Those seismological scientists are wasting taxpayer money," said one
blogger, who suggested all the bureau's employees resign. "Raising
some toads would be better than spending money on those seismological
scientists."
Ma Yi contributed research from Beijing.
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