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April 18, 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake
San Francisco, located on the west coast of the United States, is an earthquake-prone city. However, one of the most terrifying memories of an earthquake was the strong earthquake that occurred on April 18, 1906, at the beginning of the last century. At 5:13 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 8.3 on the Richter scale struck San Francisco.
The earthquake lasted only 75 seconds, but high-rise buildings and shabby houses in most parts of the city collapsed in an instant, and many people were crushed to death on the spot. Even more frightening is that shortly after the earthquake, a fire ignited, making the post-quake San Francisco even worse.
The fire burned for three days and three nights. Wherever the fire went, there was a sea of fire. The fire demon ruthlessly devoured most of San Francisco, burning everything in an area of about 8 square kilometers, making everything after the earthquake even more irreparable. Under the double blow of fire and earthquake, San Francisco has experienced an unprecedented ordeal and catastrophe.
On April 18, 1906, an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 occurred through the San Andres fault in San Francisco (San Francisco) in the United States (later revised to be 7.8), which caused great losses due to its proximity to the urban area. Post-quake fires are typical and aggravate the damage. The quake was caused by the Pacific plate sliding northwestward relative to the North American plate along the San Andreas fault. The fracture line visible on the surface is more than 400 kilometers long.
The dislocation is mainly in the horizontal direction, and the vertical component is very small. The horizontal offset is not equal everywhere, and the maximum is 7 meters. Because ground fissures can also occur on nearby parallel fault lines, the farther away from the main fault line, the less terrain changes.
The earthquake prompted American HF Reed to propose the elastic rebound hypothesis to explain the cause of the earthquake. According to the North American “World Journal” report, Mae M.Ngai, an associate professor at the University of Chicago, wrote in the “New York Times” on the 18th that on April 18, a hundred years ago, a large earthquake and the fire caused by the earthquake killed 200,000 people in San Francisco. Homeless, Chinatown on Clay Street was engulfed in flames, and 25,000 Chinese fled to other parts of the city, under the influence of racial discrimination, they faced the threat of being expelled from San Francisco forever.
Anti-Chinese prejudice since the 1870s persisted when the 1906 earthquake struck. Days after the earthquake, both San Francisco and Oakland banned Chinese victims from going to white relief camps. City officials placed Chinese in that area. Both were opposed by local residents, who protested by whites that summer winds would blow the smell of Chinatown into their front yards, and the city ended up moving them to the farthest Presidio area. At the same time, looters, mostly National Guardsmen, also started looting in Chinatown, killing a young Chinese man who tried to remove items from his home.
The nativists took this opportunity to advance their anti-Chinese agenda, mobilized to permanently drive the Chinese out of San Francisco, claiming that it was God’s will to burn down Chinatown and that Chinatown should no longer be allowed in the city. Then-Mayor Eugene Schmitz formed a committee to oversee the permanent relocation of Chinatown, with the goal of moving Chinatown from its high-priced location close to the downtown business district to Hunters Point, just outside its southern city limits. As San Francisco began to rebuild, the union also prohibited its members from working on buildings on sites that had been cleared by the Chinese.
In the face of this opposition, the “Chinese Six Companies”, an organization of business leaders in the Chinese community, and the Chinese consulate fought back. Because they were real estate owners, they made it clear that they wanted to rebuild on their own land. The Chinese consul also told city officials that the United States is free In the state, everyone has the right to live on the land he owns, provided he does not interfere with public order. In the end, it was economic interests that stopped this force to move Chinatown, and the city realized that they might lose Chinese taxes and, more importantly, trade with China, when Oakland, Los Angeles, and Seattle had all provided ports for transportation. trade with China.
Fully aware of anti-China sentiment, Chinese leaders seek to rebuild Chinatown, eradicate Chinatown’s past reputation as crowded, rundown, full of gambling and opium dens, and promote a healthy tourism image. Look Tin Eli, founder of Guangdong Bank, and other entrepreneurs, hired U.S. The architects, on the facades of standard Western buildings, used pagoda-style roof lines, and other Asian-inspired designs, to create an “Eastern-style” streetscape.
Decades after the earthquake, San Francisco’s Chinatown remains a poor and marginalized community, but it is one that has not left the city under pressure. More importantly, under the reconstruction and reform, a new type of Chinatown has emerged, a place that allows Chinese Americans to identify not only in San Francisco, but also in cities across the United States.
