The Earth Buffalo Flips Over

Shaken by an earthquake; plus events and book club.

Hello dear readers,

Albert and Michelle here. Thanks to all who reached out. In case you haven’t seen the news, on Wednesday there was a huge earthquake in Taiwan, measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale, which experts measure to be about the power of thirty-two atomic bombs. The epicenter was close to Hualien, my (Albert’s) family’s hometown. Almost all of the worst damage affected Hualien—roads and trails destroyed by landslides, places we’ve visited multiple times in the past year. Here are photos of my mother’s high school: 

Damage from the earthquake at Albert’s mother’s high school. Photo courtesy of Albert’s cousins.

But we’re all okay, and all our extended family is fine too. Our thoughts go out to the thirteen people who died, the 1,135 people who were injured, those who lost their homes, and the hundreds still trapped or missing. We are also grateful for the search-and-rescue teams that are still working tirelessly to find survivors.

Like most people in Taiwan, we were particularly struck by a story of a family of five who were buried by a landslide on the Shakadang trail, an easy, gorgeous hike popular with tourists. (We happened to visit recently with No-longer-baby-P and a visiting scholar.) This week was the annual tomb-sweeping festival, and the family had come back early to sweep their ancestral tombs. The father was found holding onto his eleven-year old daughter, trying to protect her from the falling rocks. We mourn their death.   

A search-and-rescue team on Shakadang trail, a popular tourist trail.

In retrospect, Wednesday morning had all the signs of a weird day. Our kitty (小地瓜; English name Pete the Cat) had started meowing in the middle of the night and rushed into our room to wake us up. We now know there were already tremors at that point. In the morning he tried to bite each of us—anomalous behavior for our needy, affectionate cat—trying, in retrospect, to warn us. No-longer-baby-P. woke up a full hour and a half earlier than usual, and we were ready to get her out of the house in record time. When the shaking began, we were about to leave the apartment. Michelle grabbed P. and ran to the doorway, clutching her head; P. began to freak out and yell, “What is happening? I want to get out!” Michelle and I both started wondering if this was it—at least we’d all die together, Michelle thought.  

I lived through the big earthquake of 1999—known in Taiwan as 921, for September 21—the last time an earthquake of such magnitude hit. Wednesday’s quake summoned some memories that I’d long since buried. Perhaps the most enduring one was the sound. From inside a building, earthquakes are loud: windows rattling, doors shaking, the almost primal groaning of the earth. 

No wonder Taiwanese people often refer to big earthquakes as “the earth buffalo flipping over” (地牛大翻身). It’s a phrase local to Taiwan; some scholars believe it originates from indigenous myths about the animals that created the Earth. The Ayatal peoples tell stories of dramatic movement by bears within the planet, deer in the sea, carp beneath the ground. The Tsou and Bunun peoples tell tales of rival crabs and eels battling, creating earthquakes and floods in their wake. Both the Amis and the Pazeh refer to “earthquake pigs” in their myths: the Amis attribute earthquakes to “pigs scratching their bodies under the ground,” while the Pazeh believe a colossal mountain pig, the Baluzaku, lives beneath the earth. When he stirs, the earth does too.¹

In Japanese mythology, Namazu, a giant catfish lives beneath the earth and causes earthquakes. Print from 1855, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Both in 1999 and this time, the shaking wasn’t just intense; it also felt like it lasted an eternity. But perhaps even more eerie was the surreal silence that followed. The disbelief and confusion. 

Still, there are also many differences between 1999 and Wednesday. In 1999, the quake happened in the middle of the night; I remember my mother rushing me out of bed. There was a lot of standing around while the power was out. Everything was dark, and we had no idea when power would come back. It wasn’t until the next day that we realized the magnitude of the quake and the extent of the damage. 

The level of devastation was much worse in 1999. Some 2,415 people were killed, 11,305 injured, and more than 100,000 made homeless. Over 100,000 buildings were completely destroyed or severely damaged; 102 major bridges were badly damaged or had to be torn down. A friend’s family is from Nantou county, where the quake had its epicenter; when they went to visit it almost two weeks later, they said they could still smell the stench of unburied human bodies.

Photo of a fallen building in Taipei from the 921 Earthquake in 1999. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Buildings in Taichung destroyed by the 921 Earthquake. Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.

What accounts for the difference between then and now? It’s a complicated story that many people have studied, but the short answer is that the government did a lot between the quakes to improve preparedness. In 1999, one of the big scandals involved the discovery that many buildings had been built with poor materials, after which the government changed building codes and instituted stricter inspections and new search-and-response protocols. 

But it’s not just the government’s preparedness; it’s civil society’s as well. People just seemed to know what to do. Social media was filled with videos of ordinary people responding correctly to the earthquake, such as these heroically unflappable nurses saving their newborns, as well as this TV show anchor, who urged everybody to stay calm even as her entire studio seemed to be disintegrating. 

Not long after Wednesday’s quake, people got back to work. On Twitter, Sean Kramer, a teacher in Taipei, joked that in the U.S. parents would be crying and picking up their kids—but schools here continued as usual. 

Damage at my office was limited: a tipped-over monitor, a cup fallen to the floor, but nothing significant. My morning meeting went on as scheduled, though it was punctuated every five minutes by a pretty big aftershock, prompting all of us to look at each other, wondering if we should evacuate. (There were at least three hundred aftershocks throughout the day.) By the afternoon, I could hear people around the Institute cleaning up: some offices were more affected, with bookcases that had tipped over. Indeed, libraries in Taipei shut down so that hard-working librarians could round up the books that had flown off the shelves. 

Displaced library books. Photo courtesy of the Library of the Institute of Modern History Facebook.

But the day was filled with stories of the earthquake and of solidarity. Where were you when it happened? Where were you in ’99? Any damage? One dear colleague told us all his dishes and cups had been shattered. LINE texts and emails kept streaming in. If there’s anything I’ll remember from this time, besides the sound, the terror, and the surreal stillness, it’ll most likely be the sense of solidarity between strangers and friends alike.

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Jeffrey Wasserstrom in Taiwan

The prominent scholar and public intellectual Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, is coming to Taiwan for a series of events next week! He has a talk, “Angry Ghosts: 1900’s Boxer Crisis as Global History,” at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica from 3-5 PM on Wednesday, 4/10. And on 4/12, he will be part of two exciting events: one on “The 228 Incident in International Perspective,” the other on the “Sunflower and Umbrella Movement Symposium: A 10 Year Retrospective.”

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Other Links and Events

• Ashish Valentine is hosting a panel discussion on “Taiwanese Capital, Indian Labor.” They will tackle the question: “do workers benefit from closer economic ties?” The event starts at 7 PM on Monday, 4/8 at New Bloom.

• For those interested in a quick roundup of the different lessons Taiwan has learned to enhance its disaster preparedness, see T. H. Schee’s wonderful Twitter thread here.

• We know we’ve been remiss on the ten-year anniversary of the Sunflower Movement, but we feel that there’s so much good material out there that has covered the movement and its current implications that we don’t know what to say. Ten years on, we still find the New Bloom “Daybreak Project” indispensable and inspiring. We’ve also really enjoyed this multi-part series by the popular podcast 不好意思請問一下. The first episode is here, and there are five episodes in total.

• We enjoyed this thought-provoking conversation with Yangyang Cheng about the Chinese dissident-turned-MAGA-enthusiast and are excited about checking out her podcast “Dissident at the Doorstep.”

• Two great recent review essays: Christopher Fan on Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, and Walker Mimms on Cormac McCarthy.

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Kerim’s Tips for Earthquakes

Our friend Kerim Friedman, who runs a great newsletter, posted these helpful reminders on his Facebook page. Turns out we violated rule no. 2 on Wednesday — oops!

Reminder: you should not go outside during an earthquake.

Based on years of research about how people are injured or killed during earthquakes, and the experiences of U.S. and international search and rescue teams, these three actions are not recommended to protect yourself during earthquakes:

• DO NOT run outside or to other rooms during shaking: the area near the exterior walls of a building is the most dangerous place to be. Windows, facades, and architectural details are often the first parts of the building to collapse. To stay away from this danger zone, stay inside if you are inside and outside if you are outside. Also, shaking can be so strong that you will not be able to move far without falling down, and objects may fall or be thrown at you that you do not expect. Injuries can be avoided if you drop to the ground before the earthquake drops you.

• DO NOT stand in a doorway: an enduring earthquake image from California is a collapsed adobe home with the door frame as the only standing part. From this came our belief that a doorway is the safest place to be during an earthquake. True—if you live in an old, unreinforced adobe house or some older wood-frame houses. In modern houses, doorways are no stronger than any other part of the house, and the doorway does not protect you from the most likely source of injury—falling or flying objects. You also may not be able to brace yourself in the door during strong shaking. You are safer under a table.

• DO NOT get in the “triangle of life”: In recent years, an e-mail has been circulating which describes an alternative to the long-established “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” advice. The so-called “triangle of life” and some of the other actions recommended in the e-mail are potentially life-threatening, and the credibility of the source of these recommendations has been broadly questioned. The “triangle of life” advice (always get next to a table rather than underneath it) is based on several wrong assumptions:

  • buildings always collapse in earthquakes (wrong—especially in developed nations, and flat “pancake” collapse is rare anywhere);

  • when buildings collapse they always crush all furniture inside (wrong—people DO survive under furniture or other shelters);

  • people can always anticipate how their building might collapse and the location of survivable void spaces (wrong—the direction of shaking and unique structural aspects of the building make this nearly impossible); and

• during strong shaking people can move to a desired location (wrong—strong shaking can make moving very difficult and dangerous).

• Some other recommendations in the “triangle of life” e-mail are based on wrong assumptions and are hazardous. For example, the recommendation to get out of your car during an earthquake and lie down next to it assumes that there is always an elevated freeway above you that will fall and crush your car. Of course there are very few elevated freeways, and lying next to your car is very dangerous because the car can move and crush you, and other drivers may not see you on the ground!

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Book Club: Abraham Verghese

Thanks to everyone who came to discuss EAST GOES WEST. We’ll read Abraham Verghese’s new novel, Covenant of Water. It’s a long book so we’re going to divide this up over two clubs, April and May. You can reply to this email for the zoom link. All are welcome.

1. But where do the “earth buffalo” come from? Water buffalo and oxen are not indigenous to Taiwan; they were brought to the island by Han Chinese settlers in the seventeenth century. Oxen were such important animals in the settlement of Taiwan that they gained an almost mythical status—many earlier Taiwanese Han communities had interdictions on eating beef, and older cows are treated like family members. Some scholars think contact between Han Chinese and indigenous communities led to the appropriation of an ox as a god who lives under the earth. A Japanese record of Amis myths recounts: “There is a buffalo in the earth, and when it is tired, it shakes its body, and an earthquake is caused by it.” A member of the Tsou tribe in the Alishan mountains was also recorded saying something similar: “There is a buffalo in the earth that is tired and when it moves its body, it causes an earthquake.”