72 Hours of Torrential Rain: Washed-out Paddy Fields, Disrupted Lives

Foodthink Says

First came a once-in-60-year drought. From November last year to April this year, average precipitation in Guangxi was nearly 70% lower than usual—the lowest since complete meteorological records began in 1961. Some areas faced severe drought, affecting 2.38 million people.

As the flood season arrived, drought turned to deluge. Since 18 June, the Liujiang Basin in Guangxi has experienced continuous, widespread heavy rainfall. Torrential to heavy rain hit Liuzhou, Hechi, and Baise, with extreme downpours in some locales. Among the farmers in Hechi and Liuzhou known to Foodthink, several have been hit by floods, facing water and power outages, flooded rice paddies, and poor fruit tree pollination—disturbing their daily lives and severely impacting this year’s livelihood.

With climate change—rising temperatures and increased atmospheric moisture—the probability of rapid shifts between drought and flooding will increase. Soil hardened by drought absorbs water more poorly; when hit by heavy rain, it is more prone to floods and landslides, and such disasters are harder to predict.

Foodthink has compiled accounts from four people who lived through it. Let us hear what happened to them and their reflections on the floods.

 He Li Village, Sanjiang County, Liuzhou, Guangxi

It started raining here on 20 June, with torrential rain for two days and two nights. The water and power were cut, there was no signal; we hid in the darkness of our homes, not daring to go out, feeling very restless. Some people were so worried they put on straw hats or took umbrellas just to check on their rice paddies and fish ponds.

In all my years, I remember a great flood in 1996, but this time was even worse. The mountains here are quite high, reaching an altitude of 800 metres. Trees and boulders were swept down; whole sections of tea gardens suffered landslides, which then destroyed roads and farmland further down—it was a wretched sight.

Every family has a small fish pond. We raise carp and grass carp for guests during festivals. Now, the entire village’s fish have been washed away. Fortunately, the government helped the villagers buy agricultural insurance for the rice paddies. Now they’ve asked us to take photos of our own fields and submit them to the village for statistics; the insurance company might provide compensation.

Once the rain eased, the first priority was to restore the water supply, as the village’s water source, located on a mountain 500 metres up, had also been destroyed. The source was built on the mountain because there is no farming there, so the water is cleaner. The village had built a small pond to collect spring water, leading two or three pipes down through two sedimentation tanks before distributing them to each house. This water system was built in a mountain gully, but the entire gully was scoured clean to the bottom. The pond was collapsed, and as for the pipes, they’ve vanished without a trace.

Luckily, last year the village spontaneously raised funds and labour to restore two water sources at the foot of the mountain. These backup sources have now become extremely important. Because droughts have been so severe these past few years, we dug out some old mountain spring wells and restored them, even building wooden pavilions over them so villagers could rest and drink water when working on the mountain, and use them for emergency irrigation.

When the initiative to build backup water sources was proposed last year, the villagers said it was too dry and we needed some guarantee; they also felt they’d be useful in the event of a great flood like this. Over the last two years, we’ve all realised that the climate is abnormal—it’s becoming drier and wetter.

This torrential rain destroyed the pavilion, leaving it crooked and skewed. The villagers went to clear the wells immediately; fortunately, the water wasn’t too turbid. Then we used some scrap pipes as a temporary measure to channel the water washing down the gully into our homes. The day before yesterday, we spent the whole day on the mountain inspecting the damage and gathering data before heading to the Water Resources Bureau of the county government for help. The Bureau said it’s not just our village; many townships are in the same situation. Many people have applied for aid; they will compile and collect the information, but it cannot be resolved quickly.

In truth, we’ve become accustomed to drought over the years. The first half of this year was particularly dry. When we were transplanting rice seedlings a while ago, there wasn’t enough water for the fields. Those water sources were only enough for drinking. Even drinking water was sometimes scarce, let alone irrigation. Every family had to take turns waiting for water to harrow the fields. Water would flow from your house down to mine.

I didn’t expect that just as we had finally finished transplanting, most of it would be submerged by the flood—all that work for nothing. Most families here don’t have much land; it’s all for self-sufficiency. Only I plant more; some villagers join me in growing over ten mu of ecological rice to sell in the city. Now, four or five mu have either collapsed or been flooded, and some seedlings have been covered by silt, sand, and stone. Fortunately, five mu remain on high ground, exactly where the floodwaters didn’t reach.

There is absolutely nothing you can do against this kind of natural disaster. Fields that have collapsed or been buried in mud cannot be saved. I plan to check the flooded fields once the water recedes to see if the seedlings can be propped back up. Every little bit helps.

It’s not that there’s absolutely no way. Twenty or thirty years ago, our mountains were natural forests. Later, because we were too poor and wanted to develop industry, we cleared the land to plant Chinese fir. Now there are many firs on the mountains and few mixed woods. Villagers have realised that the extreme droughts and floods are linked to monoculture. The elders say that if it were a mixed forest, there would be diversity, with various narrow-leafed and broad-leafed trees that absorb and release water at different rhythms. Now that it’s all fir, they all absorb water at the same time and release it at the same time. During a drought, they all drink; when it rains, if they are saturated, they all release water simultaneously. That’s why flash floods happen so quickly.

In recent years, we have started spontaneously planting native, diverse trees in public spaces, along roadsides, and around water sources, hoping it might help.

 Lihu Township, Nandan, Guangxi

It rained heavily all day last Thursday. We are used to floods during torrential rain, so we didn’t think much of it at first. But I never expected the water to rise so quickly. As far as I can remember, this was the most violent surge of water I’ve ever seen.

I heard that the upstream reservoirs had released their floodgates. Our terrain is low-lying and characterised by karst topography, with many underground caves. With this rain, everyone said they finally understood why the place is called “Lihu” (Inside Lake). The underground rivers are all connected, and here in Lihu, there are many inlets and outlets. When the underground rivers swell violently, the water simply surges up from beneath the ground.

This time, the flooding mainly affected the Lihu community and Bazhi New Village. I live in the Lihu community; the street is one long slope from end to end. My house is in the middle of the street, relatively high up, so it wasn’t flooded. However, almost everything below the midpoint was submerged. An aunt of mine lives at the bottom of the street; the river in front of her house is usually dry, but this time it became a raging torrent.

The aunt’s husband and two eldest daughters work away from home, leaving only her and her youngest daughter. The government notified residents to evacuate to dormitory buildings at the school. However, the mother and daughter couldn’t bear to leave their belongings behind and spent their time moving everything to higher ground.

This is a settlement area for the Baiku Yao people. The women hand-craft their own traditional ethnic clothing. The aunt had made several sets of ceremonial dress for her three daughters, to be worn for New Year markets, funerals, and weddings. A single set of ceremonial dress costs a great deal in accessories and takes several years of hand-stitching to complete. During those two days of torrential rain, the two of them moved these clothes from the first floor to the fourth, sleeping beside them when they grew tired at night.

By one o’clock on Saturday morning, seeing the water still rising, the two of them finally decided to leave. By then, their neighbours had already evacuated. They wrapped themselves in plastic sheets, exited through the back door of the second floor, and braved the torrential rain. They climbed a mountain to find a wild path and walked for about forty minutes to reach a relative’s house three kilometres away. I told them it must have been terrifying to go out so late and asked if they were scared. They replied that as long as they had each other, they weren’t afraid.

They came to stay at my house the day before yesterday, still preoccupied with those clothes. They regretted only moving them to the fourth floor, wishing they had taken them to the fifth. The heartbreak kept them awake all night. The aunt called her husband, who was working in Hunan. However, the two roads leading out—towards Libo in Guizhou and Nandan town—had both been cut. Her husband eventually made it back from Nandan; apparently, he had to climb over the mountains and take a long detour to return.

As soon as the rain stopped on Sunday, they returned home to find the water had only reached the second floor. The clothes were intact, and they were overjoyed. Had it rained heavily for one more day on Sunday, my house would certainly have been flooded too.

The government sent rescue supplies via motorboats: vegetables, water, and generators, as the power had been out for two days. Electricity returned to the street yesterday at noon, but there was still no water. I used a 5kg bucket to fetch several loads of water from a neighbour at the end of the street for cooking and drinking. But eventually, the water ran out there too, so I had to go to my mother’s house on the mountain. There was still water on the mountain because the supply first goes to high-altitude reservoirs before being distributed to individual homes. The reservoirs had enough water.

A friend of mine runs a restaurant on the street. Last Friday evening, we held an event and ordered dinner from them. When I returned the pots and basins, the restaurant was empty, so I looked into the kitchen. They were all downstairs moving things; the water was already knee-deep. They kept chickens and pigs in the basement, all of which were submerged. The chickens were easy to move, but the pigs had been fattened up to four or five hundred catties each. Trying to drive them up a steep flight of stairs was a nightmare; I really don’t know how they managed it. We had even said, “We’ll come here for breakfast tomorrow.” The next morning, my husband said, “We can’t eat there; it’s all flooded, the roads are cut, and the water has definitely reached the shop floor.”

Bazhi New Village was also flooded. Due to its low elevation, the new village floods every year. Previously, people lived on the mountaintops, but it is said that around 2008, the government organised phased relocations due to disasters such as freezing and rockfalls. However, not long after moving to Bazhi New Village at the foot of the mountain, people began to leave. The houses were too small and too far from their land. It was inconvenient for them to grow vegetables or raise chickens and pigs, and they struggled to find firewood. Furthermore, for weddings and funerals, the houses in the new village were far too small to host relatives; we sing celebration songs at wedding feasts, and there wasn’t even room for one long table. Consequently, everyone went back to build houses next to their land on the mountain.

Huaili Village, Lihu Township, Nandan, Guangxi

I arrived in Huaili Village on 11 June and stayed at the Baiku Yao Ecological Culture Museum. This was my second research trip into the silkworm culture of the Baiku Yao. During the first week, I helped the villagers care for the silkworms, which were just in the spinning stage. Fortunately, it didn’t rain during those few days. The villagers told me that if there are thunderstorms while the silkworms are spinning, the quality of the silk deteriorates, and the mulberry leaves used for feeding must be dry.

Only a couple of days after the silkworm rearing ended, the rain began. On the night of 20 June, the rain was particularly heavy, and half of the village’s ethnic square was submerged. In the early hours of the morning, the museum’s circuit breaker kept tripping, and then the power went out completely. At first, I thought the museum’s electricity meter had been flooded, but after chatting with the villagers, they all said the transformer station had been submerged, and that they had never seen the water level so high before.

On the afternoon of the 21st, Sister He, a staff member at the museum, came to stay with her whole family. Sister He runs a hardware store on the main street; because the ground there is low, it was the hardest hit by the flooding. When the waters began to rise on the 20th, they spent until 4 am the following morning moving products from the first and second shelves up to the third and fourth. Eventually, they realised it was futile—the water would reach the ceiling sooner or later—so they had no choice but to move into the museum.

Power was out across the entire township. Anyone needing electricity had to go to the Lihu Primary School canteen or the health centre to charge their devices. On the evening of the 21st, having nothing particular to do, I walked with Sister He and her family to Huaili Dazhai, a kilometre away, to visit some friends. Surprisingly, the solar-powered street lights along the way were still working.

While the lack of electricity was manageable, the lack of water would not have been. There is a water reservoir behind the museum, and villagers from several nearby hamlets come here to draw water. We had no trouble with our supply; Sister He’s friend, Green Fen, even came to the museum to do her laundry.

At 8:30 am on the 22nd, the water had reached the entrance of the township government office. When I passed by again after 3 pm, the water had receded by at least thirty or forty metres. Volunteers from the township government were helping to clean the streets, and some were wearing protective gear to carry out disinfection. Sister He and her family returned to the street, tirelessly splashing accumulated water out of their shop. Once the water receded, it left behind a thin layer of silt.

Hechi, Du’an County, Laren Town, Yaruo Village

My farm is in Yaruo Village, Laren Town, 122 kilometres from Du’an county town and over 160 kilometres from Lihu Township, Nandan. We have no major river channels here, so flooding is rare—unlike Sanjiang County, where A-Fu is based, which lies downstream of the Rongjiang River (Editor’s note: During the same period, Rongjiang in Guizhou experienced a once-in-30-years flood). My pomelo trees are all planted on slopes, so the drainage is smooth. Laren Town has also never experienced the kind of torrential rain that causes landslides; perhaps it is a place of auspicious feng shui.

Although we didn’t suffer from flooding this time, it rained continuously for over a week, washing away the passion fruit pollen. Without pollination, the fruit cannot set. I started growing passion fruit last year, but the weather then was the complete opposite of this year. There was more rain in the first half of the year, so I didn’t plant the seedlings until the May Day holiday; planting late naturally meant a smaller harvest. I only gathered just over 1,000 jin from more than one mu of land.

There was a drought in the first half of this year. After the new passion fruit seedlings were planted, we waited until May for the rain to arrive. The forecast says more rain is coming; there is nothing to be done but wait for it to stop, prune the passion fruit branches where the pollen was washed away, and let them bloom again. Passion fruit can grow continuously, so a batch should be ready for market next month.

Having experienced the heavy rains of the first half of last year, I expected heavy rain, but I truly hadn’t prepared for a drought. The dry spell began in the second half of last year, but as my fruit harvest was nearly finished by then, I didn’t give it much thought. Who would have guessed the drought would persist into this year? My yield from over two mu of maize is bound to be halved.

I started farming in 2013, and this is the first time I’ve encountered such a severe drought. It only rained in mid-May this year; if it had been two weeks later, the maize would have been lost. When the weather is too dry, you cannot apply liquid fertiliser—I use a mixture of water and biogas-fermented pig and cow manure. Without water and fertiliser, the crops cannot grow. I also planted several mu of small yellow ginger, which turned out to be drought-resistant. They were planted in mid-March, but the sprouting was very slow; if they’d had another month of growth, they would be larger.