Deadliest Earthquake in Shaanxi Province: 1556 Shaanxi Earthquake

History’s Deadliest Earthquake in Shaanxi 1556, Leveled Mountains and Reversed Rivers — The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, whose top fell during the 1556 earthquake. My Veiling

The 1556 Shaanxi Earthquake

Early in the morning of January 23rd, 1556, Ming Dynasty China was rocked by a massive earthquake that was the epicenter in the Wei River Valley’s Huazhou District, in northern China’s Shaanxi Province. The resultant damage, across a region, stretching for hundreds of miles, was extensive, and the loss of life horrific. Because it occurred during the reign of the Jiaging Emperor, the earthquake is often referred to in traditional Chinese history as the Jiajing Earthquake. Today, it is more commonly known as the Shaanxi Earthquake of 1556. Whatever the designation, it proved to be the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in human history.

Although the upheaval lasted only for a few seconds, it leveled mountains, opened fissures up to 66 feet deep in the earth, altered the path of rivers, caused massive flooding, produced massive landslides, and ignited fires that lasted for days. Over half the population of Huazhou was killed, as every single home and building was destroyed in an upheaval that probably registered 8 on the Richter scale.

The situation in nearby Huayin and Weinan was similar. The mayhem spread far and wide, causing death and destruction at distances up to 310 miles away from the epicenter, and buildings were damaged as far away as Beijing and Shanghai There have been other earthquakes that registered far higher on the Richter scale, and that lasted for far longer. But none have ever killed as many people as did the Shaanxi Earthquake of 1556.

As described in the annals of China: “In the winter of 1556, an earthquake catastrophe occurred in the Shaanxi and Shanxi Provinces. In our Hua County, various misfortunes took place. Mountains and rivers changed places and roads were destroyed. In some places, the ground suddenly rose up and formed new hills, or it sank abruptly and became new valleys. In other areas, a stream burst out in an instant, or the ground broke and new gullies appeared. Huts, official houses, temples and city walls collapsed all of a sudden“.

In addition to significant loss of life, reaching into the hundreds of thousands, the earthquake caused significant cultural damage. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, built in 709, lost its top floor and about 6 feet of height. China’s Stele Forrest museum, which housed a steadily growing collection of steles and stone sculptures since the 11th century, was badly hit, and many of its artifacts were damaged or destroyed. Most significant of those was a collection is known as the Tang Stone Classics, a group of twelve early Chinese classic works, about 650,000 characters in length, that were engraved on 114 stone tablets on the orders of a 9th-century emperor. 40 of those tablets were broken during the earthquake.

Toll and Aftermath

Aftershocks continued for six months. In many counties within the earthquake’s zone of destruction, over 60% of the population was killed outright, with many of the remainder injured, and all the survivors were left without shelter. Fatalities were particularly high because most of the population in Shaanxi and surrounding regions, taking advantage of the soft loess soil, had built their homes out of earth shelters known as yaodongs – a form of artificial cave carved out of hillsides.

Such houses have the advantage of being cool in the summer and warm in the winter, but they had the disadvantage of being particularly vulnerable to seismic activity. When the earthquake struck, they collapsed, with not only the weight of a roof collapsing upon the inhabitants, but an entire hillside falling on and burying whole communities. When it was over, around 830,000 had been killed, and millions more were injured and/ or made homeless.

That made the 1556 Shaanxi Earthquake the deadliest earthquake ever, and the third deadliest natural disaster in history, exceeded only by the 1931 China floods, and the 1887 Yellow River flood. The cost of the damages caused by the Shaanxi earthquake is probably impossible to measure in modern terms. To put it in perspective, however, China at the time was the world’s wealthiest country, and the earthquake destroyed an entire region of its core, killing 60% of that region’s population. A modern analogy might be a natural disaster that destroyed America‘s Mid-Atlantic states and killed over half their population.

In the aftermath, the upheaval inspired searches for the causes of earthquakes in general, and the best ways to reduce the damage they cause. An example was the scholar Chin Qeda, who lived through the event and recorded its details. One of his conclusions was that: “at the very beginning of an earthquake, people indoors should not go out immediately. Just crouch down and wait. Even if the nest has collapsed, some eggs may remain intact“.

Additionally, local records indicate that the earthquake led people in Shaanxi and the other affected regions to search for ways to minimize the damage from similar upheavals in the future. For example, many of those killed had been crushed by falling buildings, so after 1556, many of the stone buildings that had been leveled were rebuilt with softer and more earthquake-resistant materials, such as wood and bamboo.