Wuchang After the Flood: Disaster-Struck Farmers Invisible on the Sales Livestream

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Foodthink Says

In early August this year, Wuchang in Heilongjiang Province was struck by unprecedented torrential rain and flooding, with approximately 40 per cent of the area’s 167,000 hectares of farmland submerged.

Two months after the flood, livestream e-commerce sellers began promoting Wuchang rice, filming against backdrops of bountiful fields and reassuring consumers that the disaster had not been severe and that they could purchase Daohuaxiang rice with confidence.

What did Wuchang actually go through this summer? What do the contradictory messages reveal — or conceal? Author Yvonne attempts to understand how extreme climate events affect farmers through the story of one ordinary farming family.

As Foodthink has written before, farmers are the “unsung heroes” of climate action. As COP28 convenes, we hope this article will help draw attention beyond the fleeting “three-minute enthusiasm” that follows a disaster, and call for sustained support for farmers.

In late July, Typhoon Doksuri made landfall on the coast of Jinjiang, Fujian Province. I was working in Nanjing at the time, watching livestreams and “chasing the typhoon” for the fun of it. I never imagined that Doksuri, still gaining momentum, would track all the way north to Heilongjiang — my home province. Wuchang, the renowned rice-producing city, suffered a disaster unlike anything seen in decades. As I understood it, typhoons and hurricanes, being tropical cyclones, occur only in coastal regions, and the extreme rainfall they bring had rarely been seen in the inland Northeast.

So what was the real situation in Wuchang? Were the reports in the news accurate? Through a close friend’s connections, I pieced together fragments of what was happening in the disaster area.

I. The Flood Came

“I have never seen water like this in all my life…”

That is what Third Grandpa, who lives in Yingchengzi Village in Wuchang City, told me. In his eyes, even the great flood of 1998 had not been this ferocious. In his seventies, he still tends his fields and does not miss a single day of farmwork. Over the phone, he described the devastating scene to me.

On the morning of 6 August, when Third Grandpa arrived at the edge of his fields, he could not see the land at all — there was only an endless expanse before him. A boundless stretch of yellow mudwater had swallowed the paddies, stretching beyond sight, with only a few rice ears poking a few centimetres above the surface, swaying in the current. Many other villagers stood alongside him at the field bunds, gazing out at their land. No one spoke. The men smoked in silence, all frozen in stunned disbelief.

Together, Third Grandpa, his wife, and their daughter’s family held 100 mu of land in total — about 4.7 hectares as contracted farmland and 2 hectares allocated to the household. The open field, at a higher elevation and roughly two kilometres in a straight line from the Lalin River, had been largely unaffected. But the other two hectares of river-bend land beside the Lalin River produced not a single grain this year.

● On the morning of 6 August, the paddies beside the Lalin River on Third Grandpa’s land, entirely submerged beneath floodwater.
The two hectares of Daohuaxiang No. 2, sold at normal prices, would have brought in around 90,000 yuan. After deducting 60,000–70,000 yuan in costs — seedlings, agricultural inputs, hired labour, machinery — the family could have earned 20,000–30,000 yuan. This year, nearly all of that outlay had been made only for the crop to be completely lost, amounting to a net loss of sixty or seventy thousand yuan after a full year’s work.

Third Grandpa’s daughter, Auntie Xiuer, vented her frustration to me: “Farmers work themselves to the bone all year, and instead of earning a penny they end up in the red. We still have food, shelter, and the remaining 4.7 hectares to fall back on, but the whole year’s toil has been for nothing.”

II. Before and After the Flood Release

Before the paddies were submerged, Wuchang had endured days of unbroken rain. On the morning of 2 August, the Wuchang City Meteorological Observatory issued an orange rainstorm warning; by the afternoon of 3 August, it had been upgraded to red. Throughout those days, villagers huddled at home, waiting for the rain to stop.

Although the observatory had issued its warnings, Third Grandpa was not yet worried that the downpour would endanger the crops by the river. On the morning of the 4th, he went to check on the fields. The water level had risen, but it had not yet reached the rice ears. Years of experience told him that as long as the tops of the plants were still above the surface, they would recover once the water receded.

The critical turning point came on 5 August. That day, Third Grandpa and his wife received a notice from the village cadres: after days of continuous heavy rain, the Mopanshan and Longfengshan Reservoirs upstream had reached capacity and the sluice gates would need to be opened to discharge floodwater. For their safety, all villagers on both banks of the Lalin River were to evacuate. Third Grandpa said there had been no time to think. He simply packed a few changes of clothes and some dry rations, and he and Third Grandma boarded the village cadres’ vehicle for a temporary shelter in a nearby town.

That night, the reservoirs discharged, floodwaters surged over the levees, and thousands of hectares of paddies were swallowed by open water. Early on the morning of the 6th, Third Grandpa was beside himself. He said he would hitch a ride home to see the fields — and that is how he came upon the scene described at the beginning of this piece.

● The Lalin River and the Mangniu River run along the south of Yingchengzi Village, where Third Grandpa lives, and many of the fields lie right on the banks. Further upstream to the south-east are the Mopanshan and Longfengshan Reservoirs, from which floodwater was urgently discharged.
● The impact on downstream villages and farmland after the Longfengshan Reservoir discharged its floodwaters. Image source: independent media creator “Rural Brother Hanbing”.

Time and again, Third Grandpa told me that if the flood had come even a little earlier or a little later, the damage would not have been so severe. A month earlier, the rice would not yet have flowered and pollinated; a month later, it would have been well into grain filling or the wax-ripe stage. Short-term submersion at either of those points would not have caused a total crop failure. But being submerged right at the start of flowering, when grain filling had barely begun — that was the worst possible timing.

● Rice in the anthesis stage, only just entering grain filling, its kernels shrivelled and empty, with mud still clinging to the ears after the flood.
It was not only the two hectares of paddies that were flooded. The vegetable gardens on either side of the house were also submerged; every melon, fruit, and vegetable, along with the chicks in the coop, was lost. Mercifully, the floodwater had barely lapped over the doorstep, so the property inside the house escaped serious damage.

But Third Grandpa had heard that losses elsewhere were far worse. Relatives of his lived in a village just a few kilometres from the reservoir. After the flood discharge, a corner of their house had collapsed, water had crept up onto the heated sleeping platform, and every electrical appliance inside had been destroyed. A nearby dairy farmer, unable to evacuate in time before the flood, lost every one of the several dozen cows on which the family’s livelihood depended.

When I asked about the upstream reservoir releasing its waters, Third Grandpa said: “I don’t know, and there is nothing to be done. You cannot blame anyone, and you cannot resent anyone. It is a force of nature — no one can stop it.”

III. Post-Disaster Reconstruction

The disaster was over, but reconstruction remained a long and arduous process.

Parts of Third Grandpa’s two hectares of river-bend land were buried under sand, forming low mounds; other parts lay exposed through the mud, the paddies a dull, muddy grey from stem to ear, caked in silt. The total crop failure was now a fait accompli. He no longer tried to restore the land to its former state — all he could do was wait for next year to plough and replant.

They had taken out agricultural insurance for the paddies, which would provide roughly 200–300 yuan per mu in compensation for a total crop failure. But in practice, actually receiving that payment was itself a lengthy process. Earlier reports noted that the journey from filing a claim to collecting the payout required liaising with the local claims department, having experts dispatched to verify the extent of the damage, calculating the settlement against the terms of the policy, and finally waiting for the insurer to release the funds. For a farmer, navigating this process demanded knowledge and time far beyond everyday experience. So although agricultural insurance existed as a safety net, not everyone had enrolled, and not all who had enrolled received a payout. When I spoke to him in late September — nearly two months after the flood had come and gone — Third Grandpa’s family had still not received a single yuan in compensation.

● Vast stretches of rice paddies left waterlogged by the flood show severe lodging, with mudwater still clinging to the ears and stems.
But beyond insurance and government support, rebuilding still falls to the farmers themselves. Villagers rented their own pumps to drain the paddies and mended the walls and courtyards the flood had torn apart. “Home has to be rebuilt by our own hands,” they said. “You cannot wait and you cannot beg.” Recovery is a slow process. One month may be enough to repair a collapsed garden wall; one year to rebuild a demolished house. But when a disaster strikes at the very roots of one’s livelihood, the road back can stretch far longer — and that is precisely the dimension we tend to overlook when we read about disasters from a distance. On the evening of 18 September, the Harbin Meteorological Observatory issued a yellow warning for thunderstorms and gales, forecasting gusts of force 7–8, locally force 9–10, accompanied by brief heavy showers, hail and lightning. Third Grandpa’s village and the surrounding area fell squarely within that localised zone. After the full day and night of gales, vast stretches of his paddies showed severe lodging. Although this had little impact on the rice yield, the imminent harvest could no longer be carried out by large-scale machinery and would have to be done by hand. The difference in harvesting method alone would double the cost — and all of this fell on the farmers themselves.

Third Grandpa’s daughter, Auntie Xiuer, told me: “To be a farmer, you have to learn to live with natural disasters.” For millennia it has seemed an iron law that the people who farm and the crops they grow can only passively absorb the impact of climate change. But as extreme weather events grow more frequent, their toll on agriculture can only increase, never decrease, and farmers will continue to bear the losses and risks of disaster passively, as the most vulnerable among us. If we can draw lessons from each disaster, if more social and policy support becomes available, then perhaps when the next threat comes, there will be less suffering and more ways forward.

IV. Aftermath: Has the Rice Suffered Total Crop Failure?

With Wuchang in the grip of disaster, how badly the rice crop had been affected was the question weighing most heavily on the public mind. In Yingchengzi Village, where Third Grandpa lives, almost all of the villagers’ river-bend land was submerged, and the harvest there came close to total crop failure. Across the Wuchang growing region as a whole, post-flood estimates suggested that of the 167,000 hectares of paddies, roughly 67,000 hectares had been inundated, with yield losses estimated at around 40 to 50 per cent.

Reduced yields were a settled fact. Yet by the time the rice ripened and harvest season arrived, young local farmers livestreaming on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou presented a very different picture. They set up phone tripods in front of their own paddies and livestreamed rice sales every day, showing the normal sight of combines harvesting the fields while explaining why Wuchang rice tasted so good and why the price was so high. In contrast to the media reports of “total crop failure” and “no harvest at all” that had proliferated during the August floods, the streamers repeatedly told their viewers that the heavy rain and flooding had not seriously affected the paddies and that the rice had not failed. Admittedly, at the aggregate level, reduced yields do not equal total crop failure; but for any smallholder facing total failure, total failure means not a single grain harvested — and among those facing total failure were the very young farmers selling rice on livestream platforms. So what tensions lie between the promotional claims and the reality on the ground? I believe the issues surrounding Wuchang rice’s brand development and market disorder are a key reason.

Wuchang rice has long been renowned for its high quality and premium price — particularly the famous Daohuaxiang No. 2, which produces a fragrant, soft, sweet-tasting cooked rice and sells for 8–10 yuan per jin on the market. But because the planted area is small, genuine Daohuaxiang No. 2 grown locally is exceedingly rare. Although rice sold as “Wuchang rice” requires a local brand certification, poor protection and oversight have long left the market a mix of the genuine and the counterfeit; consumers find it very difficult to buy authentic Daohuaxiang No. 2, and in the worst cases, what they receive is not even rice grown in Wuchang at all.

● Can you tell these two rice varieties apart? The one on the left is Changlixiang — long-grained, with no fragrance; the one on the right is Daohuaxiang, with 20–40% chalkiness and an externally aromatic profile. Blend the two together, and most people cannot tell the difference, yet Changlixiang sells for less than half the price of Daohuaxiang. Image source: independent media creator “Rural Uncle Mu.”

For the local young farmers who became livestream presenters, what sets them apart from ordinary farmers, beyond the growing itself, is that they take on the selling — and sometimes a share of the buying — adding a revenue stream of their own. Because they bear the full brunt of a disaster’s impact on their sales as individuals, their only recourse is to point a phone camera at the field, conjure the image of a bumper harvest, and declare “no total crop failure” as a way of certifying that their rice is genuine. What matters most to them is holding on to consumer trust. How severe the actual yield loss was, or whether the rice they sell truly comes from Wuchang, becomes secondary. The result is a paradox: livestream selling appears to offer the public an unmediated view of the land, yet the true picture of what the farmers have endured remains just as obscured as before.

For consumers, the spectre of “fake rice” has bred a long-running anxiety, and the flood has compounded it. On one hand, well-meaning buyers genuinely want to help local Wuchang farmers by purchasing rice. On the other, reduced yields have pushed prices up this year, leading consumers to suspect that merchants are seizing the flood as a pretext to hike prices — and that the risk of ending up with counterfeit rice has only grown. The flood has thrust Wuchang into the centre of public debate, and in doing so has accelerated the rice industry’s “crisis of trust.”

In a market where authenticity is impossible to discern by eye, Third Grandpa chose to contact a grain buyer early and sell off the paddy from his remaining 70 mu. The buying price had risen from 2.5 yuan per jin last year to 3.2 yuan this year, and in some townships, buyers were reportedly offering as much as 3.6 yuan per jin.

Note: The prices cited here refer to the raw paddy (unmilled rice). Once the paddy reaches the milling plant, it is threshed and processed into rice at a milling yield of roughly 50 per cent. A paddy price of 3.6 yuan per jin therefore translates to a base rice price of 7.2 yuan per jin, to which packaging, logistics, labour and other costs must still be added before the product reaches the consumer. When buyers are trying to judge whether the “Wuchang rice” they are purchasing is authentic, the price is one of the key indicators.

Grain buyers manage the entire downstream chain — transport, processing, packaging, advertising, retail and after-sales service. They command a full professional team to build markets, manage public opinion and drive sales, dispersing and defusing the trust crisis that partial crop failures can trigger. For smallholders, even if the buying price is lower, offloading to a buyer still spares them the headaches of selling on their own.

● A livestream selling Wuchang rice in mid-October, with the presenter showcasing the rice harvest.

V. Epilogue

Winter has come. After selling the grain, Third Grandpa’s family in the Northeast prepared to retreat to their heated apartment in town to see out the cold months. The weather this winter, he felt, had been strange. Recent temperatures were some ten degrees higher than in a normal year, yet since the start of November there had already been four or five heavy snowstorms. Wet snow mixed with ice pellets and freezing rain carries far greater destructive potential than dry, powdery snow.

For the land, a winter blanketed in snow is a time to rest and recover. “Timely snow promises a bountiful year,” the old saying goes. Third Grandpa is hoping this year’s great snows will bring next year gentle winds and timely rains, and a good harvest.

● Wuchang, the paddies after the rice harvest. Photograph by maggy.

○ References:

https://news.cctv.com/2023-08-06/ARTIfRBnEs83kkpRS7As1pWC230806.shtml

https://politics.gmw.cn/2023-08/28/content_36793461.htm

Foodthink contributor

Yvonne

Someone devoted to understanding and interpreting the “Anthropocene” and the exhaustion of the world beyond it. A wayward sociology student with an interest in agriculture, the environment and climate change.

 

 

 

Unless otherwise stated, all images are provided by the interviewees.

Editor: Wang Hao

Published by Foodthink