The New Dominion

News outlets in America are reporting a massive 7.2 Richter earthquake which hit the Khotan area at 6:33AM. Here’s the scoop on CNN, and here’s the story at the Associated Press. According to the articles, the quake occurred in Yutian County around the towns of Ahqan and Bostan, and were followed by four after shocks which registered from 5.0 to 5.2 on the Richter scale.

The United States Geographical Survey has a handy .kmz file which displays real-time earthquake data when launched in Google Earth. Since the file is constantly updating, I took the liberty of isolating the Xinjiang earthquakes (it’s public domain!) and putting them right in this little file here. As you can see, although media outlets are vaguely pinpointing the earthquakes in Khotan or Yutian Counties, in reality the epicenters were high in the mountains straddling Xinjiang and Tibet, a very sparsely populated strip of land in an already sparsely populated part of China, which explains why Chinese media outlets are reporting no injuries and little damage beyond a few collapsed structures.

And this, of course, is good news. But I can’t help but note on the side that in the Chinese world view, a dizzying cascade of ill omens (say, for example, the roof being on fire, or, barely averted disasters in the heavens, or, of course, earthquakes literally sitting on the boundary between two trouble spots) usually is interpreted as the harbinger of chaotic change in the near future. In the old days, that meant dynastic change. Nowadays? Who knows.

It also would be unfair to omit the fact that in the Chinese world view, “near future” can be anywhere from next month to two hundred years from now. Well, time will tell.

March 22 Update: Xinhua has released a report in English regarding the earthquake. After the day was done, the final tally was 12 earthquakes total, including the big one that started it all. The article claims that 44,000 people were “affected” (without elaborating), that 2,200 houses were damaged or destroyed resulting in 10 million yuan of damage, but that no people were injured or killed.