921 Earthquake

Twenty-seven years ago yesterday, the Taiwan earthquake of 1999, also known as the Chi-Chi earthquake, or the 921 earthquake, left more than 2,400 people dead and 100,000 without homes. A whole mountain and town disappeared, if I remember correctly.Sheryl and I had a small apartment in downtown Hsinchu near the wet market on Minzhu Rd., we would later move to Minzu Rd., which sounds the same but for the tone you use, when the earthquake hit. The apartment already had a lack of right angles before the quake, but somehow, unlike so many other buildings at the time, it managed not to fall on top of us. The noise and the shaking were terrifying. Not the first tremor, we didn’t know what was happening, but each aftershock seemed worse than the one before.The power had gone out before that first tremor, but that didn’t stop the people at the market from going about their work as the sun came up. The Taiwanese are remarkably resilient.