Earthquake and Moment of Silence

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China began three days of national mourning today. The earthquake struck last Monday and the death tolls are now over 30,000 and expected to reach over 50,000. Throughout the past week, the country has held many fund raisers and events. Today, however, flags have been hung at half-mast and public entertainment (KTV/karaoke, movie theaters, clubs, bars, etc) is suspended. The Olympic torch is also suspended. Also, today at 2:28 pm, it was announced that there would be a moment of silence across the country. I wanted to know how that would work. It did.

Exactly at 2:28 pm, all government vehicles stopped traffic and laid on their car horns at the same time. The horns were supposed to symbolize a "wail of grief." You would be surprised how much sound that actually made signaling the beginning of the moment of silence. I have never seen activity freeze so suddenly. I was walking by tennis courts at the time and a few people were in mid-swing when the horns began. They did not even finish swinging the racket, they just stopped and hung their heads. All cars, bikes, people walking and talking just stopped where they were. Nothing moved for 3 minutes.

It's weird because I'm used to moments of silence having an announcer saying, "Ok, now we're going to have a few moments of silence...." and that is very effective. I just never really thought it was possible to organize a country of 1,000,000,000 people to literally stop their lives, no matter what they were doing, for 3 minutes. Even cranes stopped moving.

Anyways, it was pretty cool. If you haven't read up on what's going on, you should look into it. For the record, I did not really feel the quake. I am on the far north end of the city, but I know a few people who were on the south end at that time and the buildings shook a little.

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