This video shows the start of a three-day period of national mourning for victims of last week’s Sichuan earthquake, which started today at 2:28pm—a week to the minute after the quake hit.

In Beijing, the entire city shut down for what in the US would be a moment of silence but in China was a prolonged wail. It is Chinese tradition to cry out loudly at funerals, although in this case the wailing was done by air raid sirens and, appropriately enough for a city that continues to add motor vehicles in seeming violation of every law of urban planning and physics, car horns.

I can’t speak for the city as a whole, but from where I watched (the 20th floor of the Full Link Plaza, next to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a major intersection on the east Second Ring Road) it was a truly astounding scene, equal parts pathos and spectacle. Like something Michael Bay would put in a movie if Michael Bay had heart and an imagination.

The interesting thing at Full Link was the scene at the front door. Around 2pm, the building staff walked out and started dispensing white T-shirts (white is the color of mourning in China) pasted with house-shaped stickers reading 我们和你在一起 (“We are with you,” the national earthquake slogan Hu Jintao has been repeating again and again in televised conversations with victims). There was a massive scrum, during which the staff pleaded in vain for people to line up and one woman who had nearly been knocked over complained that taking part in the mourning might get her killed. By 2:30, what looked like half the population of the building had gathered on the sidewalk. With the minute about to strike, the people on the sidewalk (all but a few dressed in the white t-shirts) suddenly organized themselves into rows, faced west and bowed their heads. Traffic stopped on a dime in every direction, leaving the roads empty in a way they never are. Then the car horns started up, echoing off the buildings in a single drawn-out blast that I imagine was ear-splitting at ground-level but did sound strangely mournful from where I was listening (you can hear it in the video over a shot of the flag flying in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building.)

After three minutes, the traffic started up again, the crowd dispersed and everything went back to normal.

I’m as skeptical as anyone over the Chinese rhetoric about unity and harmony. In a country this large, with this many people and this kind of social stratification, the idea that all Chinese everywhere are part of the same household usually seems shockingly dumb, if not dangerous. But, having witnessed this scene, I’ll admit the idea has a certain undeniable power in situations like the earthquake.

It’s not just a matter of mass sympathy. As the TV coverage of Hu Jintao’s ministrations has demonstrated, simply saying “we’re with you” to people who’ve lost their houses and relatives is effective only to a certain point, after which it starts to sound horribly, viciously lame. There is, however, a practical benefit to be reaped from the “greater Chinese family” idea. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China has received $1.3 billion in donations for quake victims, a full 85 percent of which has come from people inside the country. Already that’s a third of all the donations charities collected for Hurricane Katrina victims—after only a week, in a country with a per capita GDP barely a tenth of the United States’ (by relatively generous estimate).

Seeing what happened today, I’d be willing to lay money down on Sichuan beating Katrina in donations before the Olympics start.

Any takers?

[NOTE: I've received several messages expressing displeasure with this last line, and upon further reflection, I agree it is in bad taste. I apologize to any who may have taken offense. And for the record, I've donated on multiple occasions.]