My husband and I slurped up a dumpling supper in our hotel room in Xiamen, China late last night. Anticipating a luxurious morning snooze, we crawled contentedly under the heavy sheets without an inkling that we slept at the edge of the Eurasian tectonic plate, and that trouble was brewing deep beneath the waters of the Taiwan strait.
Just before 8 A.M., I opened my eyes to find our bed shaking violently. I glanced over at the warm lump beside me to find my husband's eyelids flying open. We both sat up; pillows tumbled to the floor. It wasn't only the bed that was shaking. It was the walls. And the desk. And the lamps. And the cups.
I thrust my arms around my husband and we prayed to God that the building would not fall, leaving us trapped or worse. Then we hurriedly slipped into our clothes and prepared to make an emergency exit.
About a minute later, the tremors died away. My husband looked out the window - expecting chaos. The sparkling bridge connecting Xiamen to the mainland loomed in the distance-the surrounding buildings intact.
I picked up the bedside phone and dialled the hotel front desk. Yes, they had received calls complaining of tremors. No, they hadn't felt anything downstairs. We breathed easier, our hearts filled with thanks to God.
We kept refreshing our browsers the entire morning, expecting news of a massive quake somewhere nearby-but finding nothing.
As we walked around town, I overheard bits and pieces of conversations- it became clear that people from all over Xiamen had felt the tremors.
Then in the evening, we finally saw it on the news. A 6.2 magnitude quake within the Taiwan strait- the most severe in this region in the past seven years. Some were posting mocking videos of people, terrified by the tremors, who ran down into the streets in their towels or underwear nearby in Fujian Province.
In a time before, such videos may have tickled me. But having been humbled by the feeling of complete helplessness just that morning, I don't think I will ever take an earthquake so lightly again.
Later in the evening, my husband and I sat in a coffee shop watching the barista as she deftly layered steaming milk into the dark depths of a fragrant cup. A child and her mother took seats near us, the young girl put her palms on the table and turned to me with a sweet smile. All was well in Xiamen. But inside me, something had changed.
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