Summer means flood season. In South Asia, flood is getting international attention, as reported in this Washington Post article: Deadly South Asia floods leave families trapped without food and water.
Flood in China is raging also. Recently, almost every year brings news of towns destroyed. Right now, just north of Guangzhou, a southern city that is often mentioned in the same sentence as Beijing and Shanghai, a flood is on its way along the Zhujiang river.
On June 21st, around 9am, a woman started tweeting in real time when she arrived in her hometown, around Yingde, north of Guangzhou.
She said that she had to come back home from Guangzhou because her father is hospitalized. When she was in Guangzhou, she called to warn her parents about the storm and to store food and buy mobile phone powerbanks. She was pissed off that her parents lied to her about buying them.
In the downpouring rain, she rushed to the market in her street to buy some vegetables, cookies and bread. Then she got a phone call from her relative, saying that the southern part of the town is flooded already. A minute later, she tweeted: water rises so fast, the road is submerged now. Half an hour later, she said water supply was cut off for the whole city.
Twenty minutes later, she said: water in our home.
Two hours later, she tweeted again. She said she quickly collected her most important items (she has a baby with her), took her parents and her baby, tread water in the rain to get to the apartment of a friend who lives on the 20th floor next door.
She then updated everyone that a brand new bridge that was built 2 years ago has collapsed. Inside the city, many buildings were under water and some collapsed too.
Half an hour later, she said that the first floor of building of their home is half under water. She felt lucky that she had made her decision quickly. If she had delayed by an hour, there will be no way for her to get to her friend’s place.
One hour and half later, she tweeted that electricity was cut off also.
She then tweeted that an announcement came out calling for people in the southern part of the city to be evacuated at 3pm. Too late, she said, too much water already. People’s only choice is to get to higher floor in the same building. You have to be above 3rd floor, the announcement said.
At 8pm, she got a text message urging her to get PCR test.
At 9pm, she said that even in the highest ground in the city centre, people were urged to move to higher floors.
She said that she saw people in Wechat group begging for delivery trucks to help them transport some of their inventories (flour, rice), to save them from the water. It has been a harsh year because of COVID for these small business owners. Now the flood.
She mentioned that the weather forecast claimed that the flood was one in 20 years just a few days ago. On June 21st, then changed to one in 50 years. And at the night of June 21st, it became one in 100 year flood. The peak of the flood was to come on the 22nd.
The next day, June 22nd she tweeted again at 8am: news came in that the peak of the flood will not happen. The sun was out. Things were turning around. But everything in her parents’ home was soaked in the water. She has to buy everything new.
She also mentioned that in the news, people from her town went to ask the flood prevention centre why they did not let the flood go downstream, while upstream let water come, as a result, water got stuck in their city. Now the city was so flooded and people suffered great loss. The answer is: “if the downstream (Guangzhou) gets flooded, it would be unimaginable, we hope people in your city can understand.”
This is a very normal practice in China. Often, the government does not even acknowledge that they intentionally made such decision for fear of liability. Now, it seems to me that they have no more fear.
On Twitter, you can see some video and pictures of the flooded town.
Here is a video of the city street.
A video of the overview of the city.
Here is one photo a passenger took from the high speed train:
The description says that she first took the tree tops along the railroad as grass. Many houses has only the roof left. Water is about 4 story high.
A New York Times investigation analyzing more than 100,000 government bidding documents found that China’s ambition to collect digital and biological data from its citizens is more expansive and invasive than previously known. You can watch the 14 minutes video here on youtube.
You can also read the article Four Takeaways From a Times Investigation Into China’s Expanding Surveillance State.
In our newsletter 35, we introduced Dr. Xu Zhiyong. His trial has been expected for a long time. Finally, on June 22nd, it started. But no one is allowed to be in the court, not even his own sister.