Posted on 05/24/2008 1:58:06 PM PDT by neverdem
The massive quake that shook China's Sichuan province this week is one of the worst natural disasters – in terms of lives claimed and property destroyed – that the world has seen in some time. But an earthquake, according to Chinese tradition, is not a mere act of nature, nor is it simply a matter of fate. Traditionally, every earthquake announces profound changes that will affect the entire society.
The Chinese still remember – as do I, having been in Beijing at the time – that the great Tangshan quake of 1976, which killed more than 240,000, came just before the death of Mao Zedong. It would have been difficult for the Chinese of that era not to link the two events, according to the long-held belief that natural catastrophes always foreshadow the death of the reigning emperor.
Some 40 years later, the Communist Party has succeeded in reducing most religious institutions to dust, wiping out the Buddhist monasteries and the Taoist clergy. Yet popular beliefs remain intact, perhaps even more solid than ever – a last rampart of individual thought against the official totalitarian ideology.
It is too early to foresee how the victims of Sichuan and the Chinese people will interpret this catastrophe. But the rapid and apparently effective response of public relief agencies to the victims, a response prominently reported on the official media, is significant. The party means to prove that it hears the people, which has rarely been the case in the past, and that it understands it must react with modern efficiency to natural catastrophes.
Both the relief efforts and the government's presentation of these efforts – the mobilization of the media as well as that of the military – are, without a doubt, intended to save lives. They also aim to tear the...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Hopefully the Party (read emperors) will lose the mandate. After millions of deaths over the years, they certainly deserve to lose it.
Dec 16, 1920 - magnitude 7.8 - same area - 200,000 killed.
Not like they haven’t been there before...
I can’t believe you westerners know China so well!
Yes, in China’s tradition terrible earthquakes or other disasters are definately wrath from heaven upon tyrants. They were thought to be signs of ending of any dynasty. As the article says, people links Tangshan earthquake with Chairman Mao’s death. Now people believe it will be the former tyrant Jiang Zeming who is gonna die very soon(or having been killed already, since nobody sees him on TV for quite a while.)
Now the party’s whole propaganda machine is on the move, but still can’t hold corruption news or hatred feelings from spreading all over China at amazing speed,thanks to internet.
I am quite ready for a big change in my country.
The destruction of the highly educated "clergy" will strengthen folk beliefs and superstitions. Some beliefs seem almost to be passed on through one's genes (no pun intended).
My wife is well educated, first in Thailand and then is America, receiving her Masters of Science at The University of Arizona. She is a life long Christian. None the less, she, like her ancestors going back likely thousands of years -- at least to the time before Buddha, believes in spirits -- ghosts. It is nothing for her to tell me, "I saw my Mother last night, she is doing well." Her Mother died in 2000. She also has seen her Grandparents, Father, Aunts and Uncles. All of whom she was close to. Those who did not live good lives, she does not see. It does not matter whether they were Christian or Buddhist (her family is about half and half). Most Thais I know have similar beliefs.
The Wall Street Journal has a reputation for knowing China. It has long published it's Asian edition out of Hong Kong.
The author is a historian, apparently, who has spent time there. I'm a history and science junky.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594032165/manhattaninstitu/
I am quite ready for a big change in my country.
I hope your country can become free from the communists. Good luck!
May it be the coming of Liberty.
Stop that makes sense.
The Chinese people certainly deserve better. Unfortunately, the Chinese Leadership seems to want to reap the benefits of capitalism to enhance their own lifestyles and not offer the same opportunity to many hard working, creative Chinese.
I wish you and your fellow Countrymen good fortune as a result of the horrific earthquake that took so many.
Follow your dream!
“I am quite ready for a big change in my country.”
;^)
(Welcome to FR)
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Think about how the world (at the orchestration of the chicoms) is savaging Sharon Stone for her remark about “karma” - which is a variation on the concept of the wrath of the gods. Too bad Sharon did not suggest Ti’en
Ming instead.
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