The mystery of Kantsou

Global philanthropy came to the aid of devastated Japan. It was not the same when China, at the end of 1922, suffered an earthquake which caused more than 200,000 victims; and this difference is explained by the reason that the Kantsou cataclysm was revealed several months late, China having kept its secret as much as possible.
The explanation regarding the slowness which accompanied the disclosure of the catastrophe, we find very curiously explained in the account of Mr. Josef W. Hall, better known in literature under his pseudonym Upton Close, correspondent in Beijing of The China Press, from Shanghai, and who was the first journalist to visit the destruction area and rescue the survivors.
Kantsou is populated mainly by Muslims, who form a state within a state in China. In a bellicose mood, they profess deep contempt for other faiths...
A Chinese proverb says: “The sky kills its victims by the hundreds. The Mohammedans massacre tens of thousands of their own.” However, at the time when the catastrophe occurred, the Muslims of Kantsou were preparing a jehad, or holy war. Under the leadership of a new prophet, named Ma, who had acquired an all-powerful influence in the province, they were preparing to once again prove the sinister proverb right by setting neighboring provinces ablaze.
Ma had summoned a hundred notables to decide on the date of the uprising. They were assembled in an underground mosque, when the first shock occurred which buried them under the debris of a mountain. We understand all the better that the Celestials considered the catastrophe as a providential event, since it mainly caused victims among the Muslim clans. And we can therefore explain why China, on this occasion, did not appeal to international philanthropy, as it is wont to do in its tragic hours.
Chinese cosmology teaches that the dragon that sleeps beneath this part of the empire “wags its tail every 300 years.” It is fortunate that his periodic awakenings do not uniformly cause calamities.