In 1976, an earthquake devastated a populous Chinese city. China's political landscape shifted as well, with effects that are still visible today. Michael Fathers reviews "Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes."
By MICHAEL FATHERS
Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes
By James Palmer (Basic, 273 pages, $26.99)
It is hard to believe that 36 years ago China was an economic backwater, a country of little relevance to the world economy. In 1976 something happened. That year marked a cataclysmic upheaval—physical, political, economic—that sent China rocketing toward its present wealth and superpower status. For many Chinese, 1976 was the "cursed year." But it was also a turning point, perhaps the most extraordinary 12 months in modern Chinese history. At stake was raw political power. (click below to read more)
On one side, within the leadership of the Communist Party of China, were the self-indulgent, revolutionary fanatics called the Gang of Four, led by Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing. On the other were the so-called capitalist roaders, led by the veteran comrade, bridge player and political outcast Deng Xiaoping. Deng saw that China had come to a full stop and was in urgent need of economic change. In the middle were the old-guard fence-sitters, mainly military figures. On top of the pile was the ailing ringmaster, Chairman Mao, attended at his sickbed by a mistress and a covey of nervous physicians.
The title of James Palmer's chronicle of this period, "Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes," is taken from a traditional Chinese belief that natural disasters, especially earthquakes, are a sign from the gods. The disasters can signal that the Mandate of Heaven has been taken away from a ruling dynasty and that its time is coming to an end. And so it happened, as the Old Testament might say, in 1976.
The year began with the death of Zhou Enlai, China's prime minister and the benign public face of the Communist Party and government. His death on Jan. 8 led to a spontaneous outpouring of grief in Beijing. For many, Zhou Enlai had been a symbol of moderation and stability in an unpredictable and violent revolutionary society. In April, thousands of Chinese crowded Tiananmen Square to mark the spring festival when families honor their dead. They laid wreathes and waved banners praising Zhou Enlai, indirectly—and sometimes directly—criticizing the Gang of Four and even Mao Zedong. The protests spread to other cities in China On July 6, another veteran of the Communist revolution died: the military hero Zhu De. Three weeks later, two hours before dawn on July 28, an earthquake hit Tangshan, the "coal capital" of China, a mining and industrial city of a million people about 100 miles east of Beijing. The quake lasted 23 seconds and was recorded at 7.8 on the Richter scale.
As high as that magnitude was, it was the speed, timing and epicenter of the quake (directly under Tangshan) that made it so devastating. The 23 seconds of the earthquake, Mr. Palmer claims, was the most concentrated instant of destruction that humanity has ever known. The energy released by the seismic wave was equal to 400 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The Chinese authorities reported that a half-million people had died in the quake. (Today the accepted fatality figure is half of that.) Only 3% of the buildings in Tangshan survived, mainly pre-revolutionary offices and houses built by German and British mining companies. A flood of liquid sand and earth, known as liquefaction, emerged from the cracks in the land. It loosened foundations and caused buildings to fall in on themselves.
The quake was felt in Beijing, and aftershocks rippled across the capital and north China for weeks. Diplomats and foreign residents were ordered out of apartment blocks and told to share living space with their colleagues. Thousands of Beijing residents camped along main roads. The few foreign journalists based in Beijing at the time reported an almost holiday atmosphere in the encampments.
The Tangshan earthquake was the omen. The April antigovernment protests over the death of Zhou Enlai had helped prepare the ground. It was the death of Chairman Mao in September 1976, and the subsequent arrest and imprisonment of the Gang of Four, that sealed the end of China's violent revolutionary upheavals. On Nov. 24, as a farewell signal from the heavens, a small tremor shook Beijing when the foundation stone for Mao's mausoleum was laid in Tiananmen Square. By the end of the year the way was clear for Deng Xiaoping and his so-called "socialism with Chinese characteristics," a euphemism for the state-sponsored market economy that has brought about China's spectacular economic success.
Mr. Palmer takes us through these events with skillful ease, weaving history, politics and geophysics into a complete narrative. There are a few problems, though. At times, the book's editing is sloppy. For example, one searches in vain for the date of Zhou Enlai's death and funeral beyond a chapter opening saying: "It was a cold Beijing morning when . . . ." The general reader may well turn to the index to track who's who, since most Chinese names are shortened to surnames after first reference and there are several leading characters with identical surnames. And casual or euphemistic phrasing and clichés pops up to describe the indescribable. Famine becomes "food insecurity." Mao's widow is said to have been "something of a looker." Two of her colleagues in the Gang of Four are described as "power-hungry pseudo-intellectuals with little round glasses and blank sociopathic stares." Mr. Palmer seems a unfamiliar with the straitened circumstances of life in China in the 1970s and feels the need to explain that all telephone calls went through an operator and that "soft" toilet paper was unavailable.
The author is on firmer ground in the last chapter, where he describes the China he knows today—a place where ideology has been cast aside and nationalism has taken its place, where government officials are automatically considered corrupt and the poor are exploited by the rich. The old tyrant Mao Zedong, whose policies led to the deaths of millions, has vanished. In his place, says Mr. Palmer, is Mao as a kind of George Washington figure—a hero of the anti-Japanese war and the founder of a nation.
Mr. Fathers is co-author of "Tiananmen: The Rape of Peking," an account of China's 1989 democracy movement.
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