"Yeah,
that's exactly the problem," the woman explained. "If the television
news denies something, that usually means it's true. So the government's in a
real bind. Actually, I hear that the State Council seismologists think that
there will be a quake. You know, you two live in a tall building. You might
want to be outside at noon."
?
In the end, of course, there was no quake.
?
While
seismic rumbling and a rise in superstition were sometimes indicators of
decline in past dynasties, the latest rumors would have startled the Duke of
Zhou. A few of the superstitions underscore the peculiar public mood, which in
a few places borders on psychosis. Perhaps the strangest panic occurred m 1993
in Chongqing, a huge riverside metropolis in central China.
?
A
tale spread that an American-made robotic zombie had gone out of control and
escaped from the United States to Chongqing. "The zombie specialized in
eating children wearing red clothes, and it was said to have devoured several
kids already," reported the Chongqing Legal News, an official newspaper.
In the resulting frenzy, many children refused to go to school. Parents
protected their "little emperors" by fashioning crosses out of
chopsticks and putting cloves of garlic in their book bags. The result was a
sudden garlic shortage in Chongqing. The mayor's office was forced to address
the issue and order a new round of "ideological work on teachers and
students to calm them down and make them at ease about going to school."
?
Nicholas
Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn "China Wakes" (1994)
