A month on from the floods: how are the villagers of Mentougou faring?
Before flowing east into the urban areas of Beijing, the Yongding River forms several U-shaped bends following the mountain terrain; Longjiazhuang and Shuiyuzui villages are situated on opposite banks of the river. A road bridge connects the two villages.
Between 29 July and 2 August, extreme rainfall across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region caused the Yongding River to surge. The waters swept everything in their path, rushing towards the low-lying urban centres. News reports at the time stated that the bridge was impassable due to the flooding and the Fengsha railway line had been severed, leaving Shuiyuzui village completely cut off from the outside world. Rescue workers attempted to cross the river using ropes, but were thwarted by the raging current.
More than a month after the flash floods, looking down at the Yongding River from this bridge, the scene of post-disaster devastation remains:
Half of the iron railings on both sides of the bridge have been swept away by the flood, leaving only the fixing nails behind. The flood embankments along the riverbank have become dumping grounds for construction waste; mud, fragments of stone walls, concrete, and fallen utility poles and high-voltage cables are piled upon the levees.
A middle-aged man gazed down at the water and said with regret that the river hadn’t been like this a month ago: “Normally, the Yongding is beautiful and crystal clear. Now, it’s nothing but rubbish.”
I. The Reopening of the Market
We arrived in Longjiazhuang on the morning of 3 September. Bus route 929 to the city centre had only recently resumed service.
The scenes on either side of the market were starkly different. On the west side, most of the stalls were run by vendors from outside the village, who unloaded wholesale fruits and vegetables from pickup trucks and vans. Alongside them were various stalls selling snacks, deli foods, and general merchandise, creating a bustling atmosphere.
Meanwhile, the eastern side is the area where local farmers set up their stalls, and it has clearly not yet recovered from the impact of the floods. Nearly half of the stalls here are empty, leaving the area feeling desolate. On the remaining stalls, only a handful of vegetables and fruits are typically on display. Farmers told us that because of the disaster, many crop varieties failed entirely.
A woman from the village tried to sell us her green peppers. She explained that because her family’s land—over ten mu of it—was so close to the Yongding River, it had been completely submerged by the floodwaters; only the plots higher up the mountain had yielded anything.
Another woman, selling vegetable seeds, told us that the market had only recently reopened and business was far from returning to normal. “Usually, the road is heaving with people; you can barely move,” she said. “Back then, we’d be too busy trading to have time for a chat.”
Others recalled how the village had been left without water or electricity, and mobile phone signals had vanished. Access roads were blocked, forcing local taxis to seek refuge nearby. Following the floods, the roads were covered in a layer of silt nearly three inches deep. Even now, the thin residue of yellow mud still visible on the market floor is what remains after the cleanup.
II.“The people are safe, but the land is gone”
Looking upstream along the riverbank, the flood embankments on both sides had been swept away, leaving the riverbed littered with the cobblestones used for the dams. Trees along the banks had been toppled by the surge, and the road beneath our feet was still thick with silt. The river stretches from west to east, and the land belonging to the villagers of Longjia Zhuang lies between the tributaries and the mountains to the south.
As we drove along the farm tracks into the fields, the scene became even more devastating: some trees, three or four metres tall, had been ripped out by the roots, while others, barely standing, had clothes caught in their branches—soaked and rotten from the flood. According to Auntie Li, these were remnants of the flash floods. “The height of those clothes shows how high the water reached,” she explained.
Halfway there, the road became too muddy to drive, so we got out and continued on foot.
Auntie Li’s land is about two *mu*, but the first thing we saw wasn’t a crop—a massive red steel frame, drifted from some unknown place, stood in the middle of the field. Looking around, there were fallen branches, weeds, and earth everywhere, entangled with household items and rubbish washed down from upstream: Styrofoam, woven sacks, and iron buckets. We even spotted a jar of coffee beans in glass—something that clearly didn’t belong here.
Looking further, this wasteland of uncleared rubbish stretched all the way to the foot of the mountain.
“You can’t even tell what’s what in the fields anymore,” Auntie Li said, pointing to the debris. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the leaning maize stalks, it would have been difficult to tell that this had ever been farmland. The flood had flattened almost all the crops, with only a few taller fruit trees surviving. A thick layer of silt and sand, some ten centimetres deep and uneven, completely covered the earth.
Auntie Li mentioned that the hens she had carefully raised were also swept away; the coop had been buried directly in river mud, and it had taken the elderly couple a great deal of effort to dig it out. “I used to have eight hens; I could collect six or seven eggs a day. I used to feed them meat, oats, grain powder, and expired milk powder—anything the neighbours didn’t want, I’d give to the chickens.” The few remaining prized hens were brought back to her home in the village, but unable to bear the smell of droppings throughout the house, she decided to build a new coop.
Under the midday sun, Auntie Li’s husband, Uncle Zhang, was clearing rubbish beside the tool shed. Opening the door, various items were piled in chaotic heaps, left by the flood and yet to be put back in order. He pointed to a watermark on the wall, marking the peak of the flood; it was almost at eye level. “The news photos you see in the city only show a few spots. You only realise once you come here that it’s like this everywhere—there isn’t a single place left untouched.”
Since the floods, they have already tidied up several areas: the silt from the former tool shed has been cleared and piled to one side, and the large wooden slats they collected are stacked by the chicken coop. “These wooden slats can still be sold as scrap, but the branches can’t be burnt—what are we to do?” Due to policies banning the burning of straw, the villagers can only burn them secretly at night.
“It’s all such a mess; it’s frustrating just to look at it. I don’t even want to start,” Uncle Zhang said, lighting a cigarette as he sat by the field.
“The moment the flood hit, a whole year’s income vanished. City dwellers have guaranteed incomes regardless of the weather, but for a farmer, one natural disaster and everything is gone.”
III. “Surviving the Aftermath”
As the seat of the Miaofengshan Town government and located near the main road, the damage in Longjia Zhuang was not the most severe. During the floods, it was one of the few villages in the township that managed to maintain contact with the outside world. Many media outlets had reported on the rescue stories that unfolded here—
During the floods, the village wells were contaminated by backflow, leaving villagers temporarily without drinking or domestic water. It was only through mobile emergency water supply equipment and tankers sent by the Beijing Water Group that the villagers regained access to water; beyond the water supply, the government and rescue teams worked against the clock to save lives and mitigate danger, eventually pumping out the floodwaters, clearing the roads, restoring communications, and disinfecting the land submerged by the floods…
By the riverbank, we also saw a power repair crew erecting new utility poles along the road. Who could have guessed that in the nearby fields, a chaotic scene remained that was far harder to resolve.
As the periodic markets reopened, life seemed to be gradually returning to normal.
By midday, the crowds visiting the market were bustling to and fro, and traffic jams began to form in the village. We had lunch at a small local eatery, where the guests at the surrounding tables were all villagers who knew the owner, ordering several dishes to treat their relatives and friends. Suddenly, a woman at the next table raised her glass and proposed a toast: “To celebrating the fact that we survived!”
People had survived, but when their vitality—their very spirit—would truly recover remains an unknown. As for compensation for the farmers, Auntie Li and her husband told us that they had heard nothing so far.
Editor: Wang Hao