NANNING, July 24 (Xinhua) -- At midnight, a seven-meter-long truck loaded with basic provisions rumbled into Sanli Township in the city of Guigang, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The streets there remained half-submerged, very muddy and strewn with debris from ruined homes.
Tom Jaga, a British expat in his 50s wearing rubber boots, climbed down and waded into the current, pushing toward a house, the doorway of which had become the river's edge. His wife, Mei, moved alongside him, shouting instructions to the driver and a handful of volunteers they had hastily assembled. The couple had driven through the night from Nanning, the regional capital, after frantic yet fitful exchanges in a family group chat had made one thing clear: waiting was no longer an option.
Sanli is Mei's hometown, and her family was scattered across it. "We had to do something," said Jaga. "You don't sit and watch when your wife's family is trapped and the whole town is underwater."
Sanli's ordeal was but a fraction of the destruction wrought by that week's flooding. Days earlier, Typhoon Maysak had made its second landfall in neighboring Vietnam, while its tail end stalled over southern China.
In Hengzhou, a county-level city under Nanning's administration, water rose to the second floor of many homes, with some houses simply crumbling or washed away. Electricity and mobile phone services failed, leaving rural communities cut off.
Farmland disappeared beneath the water, and towns and villages with no history of flooding on this scale were submerged.
As the state emergency machinery swung into action, a parallel network of private individuals rushed into the affected areas in quick succession. In Hengzhou's Zhenlong Township, one of the hardest-hit areas, some of the most urgently needed supplies arrived, carried by three young women with no family ties to the area. They stuffed their backpacks with infant formula and sanitary pads -- essential items nearly impossible for locals to source in the flood-ravaged landscape, according to Wu Lisha, one of the trio.
As their vehicle could not reach the town due to damaged road, the three women strapped roughly 75 kilograms of supplies onto their shoulders and completed the rest of the journey on foot. It took six hours of trudging through mud and water to reach the town, and five more in pitch darkness to return, Wu recalled.
"People told us to turn back when our car could not move on, but we had already come this far," she said. "The formula and the pads mattered more than our own exhaustion."
Soon after news of the massive flooding broke, central authorities issued directives calling for an all-out relief and rescue effort, backed by a large deployment of national emergency supplies, specialized rescue teams, and emergency funding.
In Guigang, rubber boats and self-propelled pontoon bridges were used in rescue efforts, transporting about 12,000 students and staff trapped in a flooded school complex to safety.
In Nanning, authorities recorded over 80,000 volunteer visits to the flood-hit zones, while 70 civilian rapid-response teams flocked into Hengzhou. At one transfer hub in the city, 2,000 residents worked in shifts around the clock to sort incoming donations.
Nationwide, individuals and organizations had donated 660 million yuan (97.15 million U.S. dollars) and 5.14 million pieces of emergency supplies to Guangxi by July 14, while motorcyclists and long-haul truckers volunteered to move goods free of charge. "Those with money can donate money," said Tang Anni, who crossed regional borders to assist. "I didn't have much, so I thought I'd come and do whatever I can to help."
Jaga witnessed both the official and grassroots sides of the relief effort in his wife's hometown.
"The government launched an emergency response and mobilized massive rescue resources," he said. "The disaster response system here is complete and standardized, not random work at all."
But what moved him most was the spontaneous mutual aid from ordinary people, reminding him of an old Chinese idiom he had learned from his wife: "When disaster strikes in one corner, help arrives from all directions."
"This is the unique Chinese-style rescue," said Jaga. "Western people know China has advanced rescue equipment, but what touches me most is the sincere mutual aid spirit among ordinary people."
A couple of weeks after the water had receded, many aid workers and volunteers are still on the ground helping residents restore their lives. Newcomers are now able to arrive by car on mud-stained roads, instead of having to do so on foot. ■
