Forum: The Abyss 坎

At 10:30pm on 12 August 2015, two explosions at the port of Tianjin created a fireball visible from miles away and were strong enough to register as seismic activity by China’s national earthquake centre. The blasts killed 173 people, including 104 firefighters and eleven policemen. Within minutes, footage of the blasts circulated on the Internet.

At about 9:30pm on 1 June 2015, the Yangtze River cruise ship the Eastern Star 东方之星 capsized in fifteen-metre-deep water in Jianli County, Hubei province. It had been halfway through an eleven-day, 1500km journey from Nanjing to Chongqing via the Three Gorges, with 403 tourists, forty-six crew and five travel guides on board. The final death toll of the disaster was 442, making it China’s worst boat disaster in over six decades.