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1976 was the most extraordinary and fateful year in modern Chinese history. After ten years of havoc caused by the Cultural Revolution, an intense hatred of the radical programmes of Mao Tse-tung and his followers could hardly be contained. The year began with the death of Premier Zhou En-lai, a symbol of moderation; then in April, a rare meteor shower occurred and a spontaneous movement to mourn Zhou En-lai resulted in a riot against the government; in July, an earthquake, the second largest in human history, shook the Tangshan Beijing area, killing 240,000 people; in September, Mao died and subsequently, a military coup took place, arresting Mao's wife and her radical associates. For the tradition-minded Chinese, these momentous and unprecedented events were symptoms of a cosmic political disorder and thus indications of Heaven's anger. In "The Wrath of Heaven and Earth", Sun uses the Tangshan earthquake as a window to look into the state-society relations in 1976 by analyzing Chinese political culture, popular perceptions, and social behaviour.