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| - Misleading: These videos do not show the recent earthquake in Gansu
A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit Gansu around midnight on Monday, killing over 130 people and injuring hundreds more. According to media reports, this was the deadliest quake in China since the Yunnan earthquake in 2014, which killed more than 600 people.
Within hours after the news broke, misleading videos began spreading online globally.
A video posted on X, for example, claimed to show the scenes of the powerful earthquake after it struck northwest China. The video, which is just over a minute long, seems to be CCTV footage of an intersection. It shows what appear to be lamp posts shaking during an earthquake.
The user wrote, “6.2-magnitude earthquake Linxia in central China,” and used the hashtags #china #earthquake #chinaearthquake. At the time of writing it has over 40 reposts and close to 150 likes.
The same clip was also included in a video compilation about the earthquake made by the Times of India, a prominent Indian news outlet with over 14 million followers on X.
However, Annie Lab can confirm that this clip is unrelated to the earthquake in Gansu. The video is actually a portion of longer footage captured in Tokyo, where earthquakes occur frequently.
We found a YouTube video uploaded in March 2022 that captured the same intersection, which is identical to the X video frame by frame.
This version, which is about a minute longer, was taken near Kanda railway station in Tokyo, Japan. The video’s title in Japanese says, “Kanda Station neighborhood in Tokyo during the earthquake off the coast of Fukushima,” with a date indicating March 16, 2022.
It was the day a 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit eastern Japan, killing four people and injuring many more. Tokyo was also affected and faced widespread power outages.
The YouTube account called Kanda Live Channel frequently posts videos from the fixed live camera set up near Kanda Station.
We also found that the misleading video shared on X was cropped. The timestamp on the top right and the roadsign with the characters “神田駅北口 Kanda Sta. N” were cut off.
Video of a wailing child also misleading
Annie Lab also looked at another video on X featuring a girl holding the body of another girl. She appears to be wailing, surrounded by what looks like several people lying still on the floor.
The user who shared the video claims that the girl is sobbing because her relatives died in the earthquake in China. This 15-second-long video was shared a day after the earthquake in Gansu.
When someone in the comment asked whether it was related to the quake, the user who shared the video replied, “Yes sir.”
But it is not true. We found that the video was shot at a primary school in Hunan province in southern China, and not in Gansu.
With the reverse image search function on the short video app Douyin, we found the same video published on Nov. 24. The video had a hashtag “#演出现场视频,” clearly indicating it is a “live performance video.”
The same account also published other videos, most likely from the same school performance from different angles (Video 1; Video 2).
The buildings in the background and the bright red performing stage seen in the X footage match the ones in the Douyin videos. These videos were all shot at the same place.
We then found a video published on June 2, 2019, showing a play called Ying Shan Hong (映山红) performed by students at the 2019 Children’s Day Talent Show at Longtang Town Center Primary School.
This play has a scene similar to the one in the X video (see the comparison above). All the children in both videos seem to be dressed in the same grey and white uniform.
Other related videos showing students’ live performances found on Douyin seem to be taken at the same school where the talent show was held, strongly indicating that the video on X was also filmed at this Longtang Town Center Primary School.
By searching the name of “Longtang Town Center Primary School (龙塘镇中心小学)” on Douyin, we also found a video with its location information, which put the school in Loudi City, Hunan. We geolocated the school by comparing various building features, such as red brick walls and water pipes at the entrance.
The location information led to more videos published by different accounts; many of them show the same building in red (for example, here).
Although we could not find out in what year the misleading X video was taken at this school, we can conclude that it has no relation to the recent earthquake in Gansu.
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