地震

康熙七年六月十七日戌时，大地震动。我恰好客居在稷下，正与表兄李笃之对着蜡烛喝酒。忽然听到有声如雷，从东南来，向西北去。众人惊骇，不解缘故。不久几案摇摆，酒杯倾倒，屋梁椽柱，错摺有声。相顾失色。过了很久，才知道是地震，各人急忙跑出去。见楼阁房舍，倒而复起，墙倾屋塌的声音，与儿啼女号，喧闹如鼎沸。人眩晕不能站立，坐在地上随地面转侧。河水倾泼出一丈多高，鸡鸣犬吠满城。过了一个多时辰才稍稍安定。看街上，男女裸体相聚，争相告语，竟忘了自己没穿衣服。后来听说某处井倾斜不能汲水，某家楼台南北换了方向，栖霞山裂开，沂水陷成洞穴，广达数亩。这真是非常之奇变啊。有个县城妇人夜里起来小便，回来时狼衔着她的儿子。妇人急忙与狼争夺。狼一松口，妇人夺回儿子，抱在怀中，狼蹲着不走。妇人大声呼号，邻居跑来聚集，狼才离去。妇人惊定后转为欢喜，指天画地，述说狼衔儿子的情状，自己夺儿子的情状。很久，忽然醒悟自己身上一丝不挂，就奔走了。这应当与地震时男女两忘是同样的情状。人在惶急无谋时的样子，多么可笑！

In the seventh year of Kangxi, on the seventeenth day of the sixth month, at the hour of Xu, there was a great earthquake. I chanced to be staying at Jixia, and was drinking by candlelight with my cousin Li Duzhi. Suddenly there came a sound like thunder, sweeping from southeast to northwest. All were alarmed and wondered at the cause. Presently the tables and stands swayed, the wine-cups toppled over, and the beams and rafters of the roof creaked and ground together. We looked at one another, our faces gone. It was a good while before we knew it for an earthquake and hurried out. We saw towers and houses fall and rise again; the crash of crumbling walls and roofs, with the crying of children and the wailing of women, made a din like a boiling caldron. Men reeled and could not stand, and, sitting on the ground, were rolled this way and that. The river flung up its water more than a fathom high, and fowls crowed and dogs barked through all the town. It was an hour or more before things grew somewhat calm. In the streets men and women stood stark naked together, eagerly telling one another of the marvel and quite forgetting they had no clothes on. Later I heard that in one place a well was tilted so that none could draw water, and in another a whole house and tower had turned its face from south to north; the hill of Qixia split, and the river Yi sank into a hollow several acres broad. Truly this was a prodigy beyond the common. In one town a woman rose by night to relieve herself, and when she came back a wolf was carrying off her son. She struggled desperately with the wolf; it relaxed its jaws for a moment, she snatched the child from it and clasped him to her breast, while the wolf squatted there and would not go. The woman shrieked, and the neighbors ran up in a crowd, and then the wolf went away. Her terror turned to joy, and she pointed to heaven and earth, describing how the wolf had seized her boy and how she had snatched him back. It was some time before she remembered that she had not a stitch of clothing on, and ran away. This must have been the same state of things as when, in the earthquake, men and women alike forgot their clothes. How absurd is the helpless panic of human beings!