4 Elements: Earth

t?sse?a st???e?a: G? G?: mainland china- the year is 1556 & the winter’s early morning sun has just risen in the east of the gansu province, where the morning ritual of getting up from the yaodong & following with a bit of tea, a boiled egg & some bread to be shoved down the gullet, then on to one’s work or lessons from the high place of the loess plateau as just another day has come to pass then without any kind of warning, a sudden & unimaginable quake of 7.9-9 magnitude begins to split 20 meter holes in the earth, dropping hills & forming new valleys whereby “mountains & rivers changed places” this great earthquake killed 830,000+ people, leveling & destroying everything its path spanning as far as 500 kilometers away from the epicenter in the wei river valley of shaanxi province. with aftershocks for half a year following the initial catastrophe, though there have been quakes of larger magnitudes, the shaanxi of 1556 is listed as the “third deadliest natural disaster” in recorded human history.