BEFORE going to bed one night recently, a couple of graduate students in a Beijing suburb carefully put an empty bottle upside down on a table. They were taking precautions against the dreaded occurrence which many Chinese believe is imminent an earthquake.
Many other people in the Chinese capital have been doing the same. The sound of a bottle smashing at the first tremor might give a person enough time to run outdoors.
Small earthquakes are not uncommon in Beijing. We had one in late autumn, just about strong enough to tip over an upside down bottle. A few residents fled into the streets, but most people slept through it.
In recent weeks, however, city dwellers have become increasingly nervous about the prospect of the Big One. Late in December a rumour swept through the city streets and hutongs that there would be an earthquake of six degrees magnitude between December 28th and January 3rd.
In one district according to the journal Yangcheg Wanbao, a neighbourhood committee roused the residents with gongs just before midnight and hundreds of people spend the night in the freezing cold streets. In another community a father stowed a large bottle of Coca Cola and his savings book in the bathroom. In the diplomatic centre a foreign insurance executive stored a month's supply of water and food in a secure place.
In a suburb an employee of the State Seismological Bureau for Earthquake Forecasting was caught up in a similar night time scare and it became a joke in his office the next day.
However, the prospect of a severe earthquake in Beijing is no joke. The city of Tangshan 100 miles east of the capital was wrecked in 1976 by one of the worst earthquakes in Chinese recorded history. The main shock waves were so immense they caused heavy damage in Tianjin 60 miles to the south and even in Beijing. Over 240 000 people were killed and 160,000 seriously injured.
The head of the propaganda department of the State Seismo logical Bureau says there are four factors contributing to the "earthquake terror psychology The first is the memory of what happened in Tangshan. Second, the country's buildings have a relatively poor anti seismic capacity so people lack confidence in their ability to survive. Third, people do not know enough about how to reduce risk and losses.
And fourth, people are well aware of the unstable seismic condition of China, a country of three gigantic natural terraces formed by massive tectonic movements which have not settled to this day.
It's not only Beijing which is afflicted by earthquake scares. In 1995 a rumour of impending earth movements sent the people of a coastal city of Bohai Bay rushing out to stores to buy anti seismic materials. Shops were quickly sold out of tents and convenience foods, workers refused to go into factories and foreign businessmen hastily packed up and left.
In 1966 a similar earthquake occurred in Shizuishan City in the arid north west, and people slept in the streets for several nights.
What makes the rumours so potent now is the tradition in Chinese history that cataclysmic natural events such as earthquakes or floods occur when profound social or political upheavals are imminent. And this is a year of at least one predictable momentous event, the return of Hong Kong to the motherland after a century and a half in British hands.
Such beliefs are not officially encouraged in modern China but the association remains in people's minds. Especially since the gigantic tremor which laid waste Tangshan occurred just six weeks before Chairman Mao Zedong died.
Now Mao's 92 year old successor, Deng Xiaoping, is reputed to be at death's door.
If the great revolutionary leader, whose name means "Little Bottle" is about to follow Mao, perhaps it is indeed a prudent act to turn an empty bottle upside down on the table before switching out the lights.