A Hundred Days After the Flood: A Beijing Farm’s Long Road Back
In the three months since the disaster, almost everyone – from anxious consumers to government officials at every level – had been asking Zhen Rui the same question: “What are you planning to do next?”
In the early hours of 28 July 2025, extreme rainfall struck the mountainous areas north of Beijing. Flash floods laden with silt and debris surged over the levees. On the banks of the Qingshui River in Beizhuang Town, Miyun District, Sohu Farm, managed by Zhen Rui, was reduced to rubble overnight. Two local workers narrowly escaped with their lives from the dark torrent.
These 450 mu of land were the life’s work of Zhen Rui, an agriculture graduate born in the 1980s, over thirteen years of toil. Since the autumn of 2012, he had grown fresh-eating corn (sweet corn), fruit trees and vegetables here, tending home vegetable plots leased by more than 100 members, and over the years welcoming guests who came to camp and bird-watch along the Qingshui River. Each year, from late June to early October, more than ten successive harvests of corn ripened in turn, travelling from field to table.
For more than three months now, Zhen Rui has been clearing debris, assessing losses, attending meetings with government departments and scrambling to plan the farm’s rebuilding. Yet the future remains uncertain. How can farming continue? Where will the rebuilding funds come from? Will disaster strike again?
And his story is merely a microcosm. This abnormal torrential rainstorm swept across the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region from 23 July, lasting 147 hours, affecting 300,000 people, leaving 144 missing or dead, and destroying extensive tracts of permanent basic farmland. As extreme weather events grow ever more frequent and the rain belt gradually shifts northward to regions ill-prepared for flood defence, how are farmers to survive?
I. Resume Farming?
A local government official told Zhen Rui that by year’s end, during the annual land-use change survey conducted by the natural resources departments, the land classification would be updated based on the actual use of each plot. If expert assessment confirmed the farm site could not be returned to cultivation, it would be reclassified from “arable land” to “forest land” or “grassland.”
A joint policy document issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration stated that to safeguard the “arable land red line,” arable land area generally must maintain a balance between gains and losses. However, land damaged by natural disasters that cannot be returned to cultivation qualifies for an exemption.
“Don’t force planting on land that isn’t suitable – leave it as it is. Once the adjustment is made, look at whether tourism could be developed,” the local township Party secretary told Zhen Rui.
After abandoning the idea of rebuilding on the original site, Zhen Rui began scouting the surrounding area. “We’re all just huddling together for warmth and consoling one another,” he said. After a few weeks, an idea gradually took shape: grafting the business onto a neighbouring farm.
He has now reached a temporary cooperation with a farm two kilometres away. The neighbouring farm sits on higher ground, was less severely affected by the disaster, and has 150 mu of high-standard farmland, newly built heated greenhouses and a camping operation. Inside the heated greenhouse, Zhen Rui replanted his own farm’s most representative crop: fresh-eating corn. In return, he directed his existing camping clients to the new farm.
On 24 September, the first sweet corn seedlings emerged from the new soil. Even without knowing whether these young shoots would survive the cold winter in the Beijing mountain suburbs over the next hundred days, they were nonetheless the nearest hope in Zhen Rui’s sight.
But Zhen Rui still cannot bear to give up the farm, because he feels “a sense of responsibility, and an emotional attachment.”
“Even if this place can never be farmed the way it was before, it would still be good if we could leave some warnings or references for those who come after us,” he said.
II. Funding
The flood wiped out at least 30 million yuan of the farm’s cumulative investment. After the downpour, the perimeter wall collapsed, and the people coming through became unpredictable. For a month, Zhen Rui and another local colleague struggled on in the silt, salvaging the metal frames from the warehouse, colour-coated steel door frames and wreckage from farm machinery, which they gradually sold to scrap merchants, recovering 30,000 yuan in total.
In the aftermath, the local government promptly required the farm to report data on the area planted with crops and expected yields, as well as losses to agricultural hardware facilities and cultural-tourism infrastructure. But the compensation standards had yet to be published.
The township government also said it would provide a 50% subsidy towards the cost of rebuilding polytunnels, warehouses and similar facilities. “This was a natural disaster – the government truly has no obligation to ‘compensate’ us. We are grateful,” Zhen Rui said. “But the problem is, after the disaster, our operations were virtually halted. The polytunnels cost 300,000 yuan to build in total – how can we possibly find the 150,000 yuan our share would be?”
The one certainty was that this flood had been “an enormous lesson,” Zhen Rui said.
In the forty-odd years of his life, Zhen Rui had lived almost entirely in the dry north and “had only ever seen floods on the news.” He had always been the fortunate one. In 2018, the rainy season was unusually long, corn struggled to pollinate and set seed, and the farm went twenty consecutive days without a single ear to sell. The Qingshui River, which runs alongside the farm, rose steadily and swept away the submersible bridge near the farm’s small entrance gate. Watching the submersible bridge topple, Zhen Rui realised for the first time that climate change seemed close to home. But the weather soon cleared and the crisis passed.
In 2023, extreme rainfall brought by a typhoon struck the south of Beijing, killing 33 people and leaving 18 missing. Some farms belonging to farmer friends in Fangshan were destroyed, and Zhen Rui “felt a certain relief.”
He never imagined that just two years later, extreme rainfall would strike Miyun. “I suppose I was still a little complacent about climate change,” he said.
Zhen Rui had never insured his crops or agricultural infrastructure. The reason was straightforward: the premiums could run to tens of thousands of yuan a year, but the payouts were limited. In more than a decade, the only time Zhen Rui had even considered purchasing agricultural insurance was the year after hail had damaged the farm’s apricot trees. He learned that Anhua Agricultural Insurance Company charged over 1,000 yuan in premiums for apricot tree cover. In the end, he can barely remember whether he actually bought it.
Each year, he purchased only social insurance and accidental injury cover for his employees, and premises liability insurance for guests participating in camping, bird-watching and similar activities – the latter specifically covering personal injury and property damage caused by accidents within the operating premises.
Since 2007, the central government and local governments have provided premium subsidies for farmers purchasing agricultural insurance. This type of “policy-based agricultural insurance” covers crop farming, animal husbandry, and agricultural assets such as greenhouse structures, farm machinery and more.
In Beijing, for major crops such as corn, wheat and rice, the central government subsidises 35% of the premium, the municipal government subsidises an additional 25%, and farmers pay only 40%.
Insurance payouts are generally determined by the insured amount tier, the growth stage of the crop at the time of damage, and the affected area. Taking corn as an example, there are three tiers of insured amounts: “crop insurance” (also known as “input-cost insurance”), which covers basic planting costs such as seeds, fertiliser, pesticides, mechanised cultivation and irrigation; “full-cost insurance“, which also includes land rent and labour costs; and “crop income insurance“, based on the expected income per mu of corn and covering the dual risks of yield loss from natural disasters and falling market prices. Premiums increase progressively through the three tiers.
Zhen Rui had “no understanding of” these details before. His knowledge of agricultural insurance was mainly limited to guarding against “unexpected accidents.”
As of January 2024, Fangshan District government data showed that in response to the 2023 extreme rainstorm, a total of 18,900 mu of affected farmland had received 16.2 million yuan in policy-based agricultural insurance payouts – an average of 857 yuan per mu. In addition, 66,000 household filings and 89 agricultural enterprises received 443 million yuan in government relief and subsidies.
Beijing’s policy-based agricultural insurance actually also includes agricultural property insurance, covering hardware facilities such as farm machinery and polytunnels. Zhen Rui had no idea this type of cover existed. “I did wonder afterwards – what if I had bought it? But thinking it through again, we in this industry can barely make money as it is. To spend tens of thousands of yuan every year on insurance against an event of such low probability – I really could not bring myself to do it.”
III. Reincarnation
The cycle began in the 1970s. The land where the farm now sits was once a riverbank. In a nationwide “Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture” drive to expand arable acreage, a layer of soil 30 to 40 centimetres thick was spread across the bank. The campaign was eventually halted in the 1980s for its damage to the environment.
“But the meaning it symbolised has always remained,” Zhen Rui said. “It is the effort to reshape the environment so that it becomes better suited to production.”
In the autumn of 2012, another wave pushed Zhen Rui onto this land. As food safety scandals and smog dominated the headlines, many middle-class white-collar workers decided to “flee the city” and “return to the countryside”. Among them was Zhen Rui, who had recently graduated from China Agricultural University and was working at a seed company.
“There were many voices then, reflecting on how we should truly live in the future. Or put more starkly: how on earth should we go on living?”
When he first took over the farm, he would roam it with a spade, digging into many corners of the soil. In places the earth was impoverished, with poor water and nutrient retention.
So cow dung, sourced cheaply from nearby livestock farms, was spread across the fields – thick black layers covering the soil one after another. “We used it lavishly, as if cost were no concern at all.” To ensure a steady supply of manure, the farm once kept more than 3,000 chickens and a dozen pigs, until avian influenza and swine fever gradually forced the livestock sheds to close.
Many fellow “middle-class returnees to the land” eventually left, but Zhen Rui stayed. The soil improved day by day; once water retention strengthened, watering frequency gradually fell. Irregular plots were levelled and rearranged into fields of varying heights, with different crops in their respective zones. Polytunnels rose from the ground. Roads were replanned to allow vehicles in and out. To respond to the “three-sector integration” policy and boost revenue, the farm developed bird-watching, camping and other businesses.
It was not until this disaster that he began to reconsider everything he had worked for. From a riverbank to fertile farmland, and back to the starting point overnight – was this a warning from nature? We may need to think carefully about what “adapting to local conditions” truly means. Before, people thought that being closer to a residential village and more convenient for farming made a place “suitable”. Now, shouldn’t we first consider the river’s original form and the trajectory of climate change, and only then rethink how the land should be used?”
Thirteen years into farming, the same question – “how on earth should we go on living?” – has surfaced again. This time, the answer depends on a capricious climate.
With the unexpected becoming the norm and extreme weather repeatedly surpassing existing frameworks of knowledge, farmers have no choice but to relearn how to adapt to nature. On the other hand, whether land-use plans, disaster prevention and relief capabilities, insurance subsidy policies and other institutional forces can provide a safety net for rural areas facing disaster risk remains to be clarified.
“If there is a next year, the corn will grow again. There will surely be a next year, when corn bears witness once more to how nourishment rises from mud and silt, and how sunflowers bloom again from ruins.”
On 8 August, Zhen Rui wrote these words in an article on his WeChat public account.
Unless otherwise stated, all images are courtesy of the interviewee
Editor: Pei Dan