Myanmar Quake: Chinese Jade Traders See City Collapse
Ye Qi gripped the steering wheel with both hands as the highway ahead began to shake and twist before his eyes. He quickly pulled over his car and watched as over the next 30 seconds the asphalt road was shattered into uneven clumps.
The time on the dashboard showed 12:50 p.m., the moment on March 28 when Myanmar was struck by a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake.
Ye, a 43-year-old jade merchant from China who lives in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, had been driving a friend to the airport at the time of the disaster. As of morning local time on April 3, the death toll from the quake stood at 3,085, including three Chinese nationals, with 4,715 injured and another 341 missing, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, which cited data from Myanmar’s State Administration Council.
With the Mandalay International Airport now closed, Ye turned around and headed to the Maha Aung Myay Gem Trading Center, where he runs two stores, to survey the damage and check on his younger brother and more than 20 employees. The drive back, which normally would have lasted only 60 minutes, took almost four hours in the traffic gridlock, as thousands of motorists attempted to navigate the now-fractured roads, tunnels, and bridges.
Along the way, Ye saw that multiple high-rise buildings had collapsed, many of them hotels that he’d been familiar with. These were usually booked year-round, primarily by Chinese business people in town to buy jade.
Some 40 kilometers away, Lin Guang was eating lunch at a restaurant in downtown Mandalay when the first tremor hit. After spotting several tall buildings swaying violently, he decided to evacuate and rush back to his accommodation, the Win Star Hotel. When he arrived, it was already beginning to tilt.
Video footage from that day shows one of the hotel’s three connecting buildings leaning at a roughly 15-degree angle. When a second tremor hit the city, Lin watched on as the hotel crumbled to dust. Several buildings surrounding it also collapsed or developed deep cracks.
According to Lin, about 20 people were trapped in the rubble. On March 29, a rescue team arrived onsite and declared that there were no signs of life.
Lin, who works in logistics for the jade trade, had been living at the Win Star Hotel for the past three years and had become friendly with many of its employees. He estimates that 90% of the guests were Chinese.
The two-star property is only a 10-minute walk from the Maha Aung Myay Gem Trading Center, making it a popular choice among jade merchants. Like many others in the area, the hotel was run on gasoline generators, with most rooms having electricity for just five or six hours a day.
Relief efforts
Ye eventually made it to the gem trading center, and was relieved to learn that his brother and employees were safe and sound. He was also able to update his family and friends back in China. However, several structures at the jade marketplace had suffered damage or collapsed entirely.
On social media, he posted photos taken before the disaster of bustling crowds outside one of his stores, along with the caption: “An earthquake has shattered this once-beautiful landscape. Some things, once transformed, become the subject of much nostalgia.”
While the marketplace usually opened at 8 a.m., on March 28 it was closed for Shwe Sar Yan Pagoda Festival, a religious event in Myanmar. However, the scorching heat that day meant many people would have been indoors, trying to stay cool.
After checking on things at home, Ye joined the rescue efforts. At 4 a.m. on March 29, he headed to the site of a four-story hotel he knew well, now reduced to rubble. Generators hummed as an excavator dug through debris. Over the next several hours, Ye arranged buses to transport Chinese nationals to Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon — around an eight-hour trip in normal conditions — so that they could return home.
That same morning, high school student Yanzi, an ethnic Chinese raised in Myanmar, made the 90-minute drive from the town of Pyin Oo Lwin to Mandalay with her uncle to deliver water and other emergency supplies to survivors and relief workers. She first encountered large rescue teams at the Paragon Hotel before heading to the Yunnan Guild Hall and a makeshift refuge close to the historic Mandalay Palace, where restaurant owners were providing free food.
“Masks and body bags are urgently needed right now,” she says, adding that, with temperatures reaching above 40 degrees Celsius and shortages of disinfectant and medical professionals, there was a serious risk of disease outbreaks.
Myanmar has been in the grip of a civil war since 2021. Even before the earthquake, many areas of the country — especially the northwestern Sagaing Region — were struggling with food and water shortages and public health problems, according to analysis by the Zhuoming Disaster Information Service, a Chinese NGO. The recent suspension of United States government aid to Myanmar is also said to have exacerbated the situation.
Ping Le, an experienced disaster relief worker at Zhuoming, says the country urgently needs medicine and clean drinking water, with diseases such as malaria already spreading in some regions.
Myanmar’s leader Min Aung Hlaing made a rare appeal for international aid on March 28, saying, “We sincerely welcome all countries, organizations, and individuals willing to help those affected by this earthquake.”
Disaster relief workers from China began arriving in Myanmar as early as March 29. China Central Television, the state broadcaster, reported that China’s professional search and rescue team landed in Mandalay on the evening of March 30, shortly after three civilian groups were deployed by the Ministry of Emergency Management.
At about 8 a.m. on March 30, members of Ramunion Rescue, a civilian group from the eastern Zhejiang province, located three survivors trapped in the wreckage of the 11-story Sky Villa condo, which had partially sunk into the ground, in central Mandalay. Through knocking and call-and-response techniques, they determined that all three were in stable condition, and after several hours of digging they were able to pass them food and water.
“The temperature is now 43 degrees Celsius, aftershocks are frequent, and our rescue team is physically exhausted,” said one member of the Ramunion Rescue team, as the recovery operation was paused to allow firefighters to tackle a secondary blaze.
At 7:15 a.m. on March 31, the three survivors — including a child who had been buried for more than 60 hours — were pulled from the rubble.
Earlier that day, shortly after midnight, the Chinese rescue team had successfully helped a woman who had been trapped for nearly 60 hours in the ruins of the Great Wall Hotel. According to CCTV, as of April 2, Chinese crews had saved nine lives in Mandalay.
Reported by Yuan Lu and Chen Canjie.
A version of this article originally appeared in The Paper. It has been translated and edited for brevity and clarity, and is republished here with permission.
Translator: Vincent Chow; editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.
(Header image: A plush toy lies atop the destroyed Sky Villa Condominium in Mandalay, Myanmar, March 30, 2025. Sai Aung Main/AFP via VCG)
