The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26 in 2004 coincided with another, more positive, seismic shift in the northeastern province of Liaoning .
Li Keqiang, on his 12th day as the province's new party chief, made a surprise appearance in Fushun , an industrial city in the east of the province once famed for its coal production.
After a brief stroll through the blighted neighbourhoods of Modigou, a ragged swathe of land on the city's southeastern edge crowded with small, ramshackle houses thrown up helter-skelter several decades ago, Mr Li stepped into a house of little more than 20 square metres - home to a family of six.
'You can take my word for it,' he said. 'It won't take too long to get you out of the penghu [slum] home. We're willing to smash the pot to sell iron [to gather enough money] if that's what it takes.'
What was then taken as well-intended lip service turned out to be the beginning of a massive redevelopment project for the nation's worst slums. Liaoning's urban contours have since undergone a transformation, with more than 12 million square metres of slums consigned to the history books.
New apartment blocks rise from cleared patches of land; boxy concrete structures painted pastel yellow, green or pink. More than 1.2 million former slum dwellers have a decent place they can call home, most for the first time in their lives.
The speed of the process has been staggering. In Fushun, 400,000 square metres of slum dwellings was knocked down in the first 40 days.