Ten years ago, when Sun Chi-kuang (孫啟光) walked out from the wreckage of the Tunghsing building in Taipei after his older brother, Sun Chi-fong (孫啟峰), was lifted out of the rubble six days after the 921 Earthquake, loud cheers erupted from relatives and rescue workers and a new sense of hope emerged.
The Tunghsiung building was the only structure in Taipei City to be completely destroyed by the quake. Eighty-seven people were killed, 105 injured and more than 250 left homeless in the collapse.
During the six days before the younger Sun, who was 19 years of age at that time, dug a tunnel behind a smashed refrigerator and crawled out of the rubble, the two brothers stayed alive by eating rotten apples and drinking stale water and their own urine. In the darkness, they called out each other’s name to confirm their existence and Sun Chi-fong had his 24th birthday celebration under the ruins.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
For many, the morning the younger Sun walked out and yelled “My name is Sun Chi-kuang, a survivor!” was a miracle. For the two brothers, the fear and trauma left by the quake is still alive today.
Ever since the earthquake, the two Suns always place a bottle of water and flashlight at their bedside and always have the light on before going to sleep.
“Ten years on, I am still afraid of earthquakes,” Sun Chi-kuang said.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
The older Sun said memories of the quake and the following six days are still vivid. He and his brother were playing poker when the quake hit their home. They dove under a table, which shielded them from falling debris.
Relatives of the Suns, including the entire family of their aunt, who lived on the fourth floor of the building, did not survive the quake.
As survivors whose miraculous story was broadcast throughout the country, for a long time the two brothers lived with a sense of guilt and enormous pressure as they tried not to fall short of public expectations.
“We’ve been trying to live our lives ... and learned that the best way to repay the kindness and help from those who saved us is to live in the moment,” Sun Chi-fong said while attending a memorial concert organized by Taipei City’s Fire Department in Da-an Park on Saturday.
The older Sun, who is now a computer engineer, would normally celebrate his 35th birthday tomorrow. However, he holds his birthday celebration on Sept. 21 instead.
“I still think about the quake and to me, Sept. 21 is my birthday because me and my brother were reborn on that day” he said.
The two brothers kept a low profile over the years and turned down various interviews and invitations so they could lead a quiet life. On the 10th anniversary of 921, however, they accepted an invitation by the Taipei City Government, not only to thank officers from the Fire Department who rescued them, but also to encourage survivors of Typhoon Morakot through example.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching