A light earthquake struck Beijing overnight, waking residents and sending students rushing from their dorms as videos of shaking living rooms went viral on Chinese social media on Wednesday.
According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the 4.5-magnitude quake hit a suburb of the nearby port city of Tianjin at 01:21 a.m. local time at a depth of 10 kilometers.
The China Earthquake Networks Centre measured the quake at a magnitude of 4.2 and a depth of 20 kilometers, placing the epicenter in Yongqing County in neighboring Hebei province.
According to the Beijing Earthquake Agency, the epicenter was only 13 kilometers from Beijing at the closest point, with tremors felt strongly in some areas of the Chinese capital.
It was gathered that Beijing, a metropolis of 22 million people, has periodically been affected by tremors from earthquakes nearby.
