Last Thursday morning I was on the bus to work in the central business district of Beijing, browsing social media and loathing myself for obsessing over posts about fashion, when I saw a picture of black and purple smoke rising over thousands of completely burnt-out cars. News travels fast in China these days. The photo was reposted by a friend of mine, who is from Tianjin. It looked like a war zone.
The last time I saw something this terrifying was seven years ago. Back then I was working as a journalist for the Chinese state media, and on the afternoon of May 12 a friend called to tell me there had been a major earthquake near his home town in Sichuan province. He hung up in a rush, saying he needed to check if his parents were safe.
In 2008 it was unusual for breaking news to arrive via your phone. Facebook and Twitter were already blocked to most Chinese internet users. Weibo, which has been called the Chinese version of Twitter, did not yet exist. Neither did WeChat — now China’s most widely used social media platform and the one on which I heard about last week’s tragedy in Tianjin. It would not be launched for more than two years.