Sun Ronghua, the only doctor in the worst hit Bijiafang Village, said she
received no patients wounded in the quake yesterday afternoon.
The earthquake did however alarm some people.
Villager Bi Chunying, 58, said he would keep his door open at night and sleep
with his clothes on.
Seismic waves spread to Beijing, 120 kilometres north, Tianjin, 80 kilometres
northeast, and even to Shandong and Shanxi provinces yesterday at noon, before
finding their way on to headlines in cyberspace.
Wang Yelun, a Beijing resident, said he was startled when, sitting in a
restaurant, he felt as though someone was pulling his chair.
"Many people realized it was an earthquake and rushed out of the restaurant,"
he said.
A woman patient at No 1 Central Hospital in Tianjin, who identified herself
only as Wang, said at first she thought her relatives were shaking her bed and
she felt "dizzy" when it shook for a third time.
For many people yesterday's quake was a reminder of the catastrophic
earthquake that devastated Tangshan city 30 years ago.
Also in Hebei Province, about 200 kilometres east of Beijing, the Tangshan
earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, left 240,000 dead and 160,000
seriously injured.
Experts with the China Earthquake Administration advised Beijing residents
not to believe rumours or panic, as buildings in the capital have been designed
to resist earthquakes with a seismic intensity scale rating of VIII, the Xinhua
News Agency reported.
The seismic intensity scale is a way of rating the
effects of an earthquake at different sites. Intensity ratings are expressed as
Roman numerals between I at the low end and XII at the high
end.
