Wang Rongying was resting in bed at 6 p.m. on Monday when her phone began buzzing with messages. Neighbors warned that the heavy rain outside was causing street flooding to reach dangerous levels. When she opened her front door to check, floodwater rushed in.
“I was terrified—I haven’t seen flooding this bad since the 1980s. We got no warning,” said Wang, looking at the soaked ruins of her two-story home in Miyun, a Beijing suburb hit by severe floods that evening. By midnight, 28 Miyun residents had reportedly died.
“Just being alive feels like a blessing,” said 71-year-old Wang on Tuesday afternoon, still wearing her mud-stained clothes from the night before.
Like many elderly neighbors, Wang took shelter on her rooftop, waving a red cloth to signal for help. After hours of waiting, rescuers found her around 11 p.m. and took her to a relief center, where she was given sweets to manage her diabetes.
### Ignored Warnings
This week’s floods dumped a year’s worth of rain on Beijing in less than a week, overwhelming emergency services. Thirty people died in Miyun and nearby Yanqing, with over 80,000 evacuated. In neighboring Hebei, eight died in a rain-triggered landslide, and more than 130 villages lost power.
While many Beijing residents received vague government texts about landslide and flash flood risks, some in Miyun told the Guardian they either missed the alerts or found them too general to be useful.
“There was just a broad notice—it didn’t help much,” said a 37-year-old sanitation worker searching for valuables in Miyun’s flooded Century Sports Park. He had been working in central Beijing when the floods hit. “My mind raced to my family—I couldn’t focus,” he said. By the time he returned home, the water had receded, but his belongings were ruined, costing him an estimated 20,000 yuan (about £2,100)—months of wages.
### Uninsured Losses
Wang, like many retirees in the area, lives on a modest pension of 3,000 yuan a month. Uninsured, she faces roughly 100,000 yuan in damages. “We’ll have to cope somehow,” she said, handing out watermelon slices to visitors. Miraculously, her pet parakeets and a large Mao Zedong poster survived.
Extreme weather is growing more frequent in China due to climate change. Earlier this month, officials reported 25 million people affected by natural disasters in the first half of 2024. Last month, deadly floods struck Guizhou province, and in 2023, Beijing’s western district saw record rainfall that killed at least 20.
While China’s disaster response has improved with experience, many still rely on their own resourcefulness during crises.The social safety net for disaster survivors is very limited.
In Beijing’s Miyun district, residents navigate a flood-damaged road, with some areas still cut off by floodwaters.
Wang’s neighbor, 69-year-old retired farmer Duan, was rescued with his wife on Monday evening by a forklift truck that lifted them from their rooftop. He said everything in his home was destroyed, including a new air conditioner he had recently bought for 6,000 yuan. “That was a big expense for us,” he said. Together, he and his wife earn about 4,000 yuan a month. Like Wang, Duan has no insurance for his belongings and doesn’t expect government compensation for his losses.
While scientists agree that rising global temperatures contribute to natural disasters, Chinese media rarely make this connection. Many people, especially in less developed areas like Miyun, don’t pay much attention to climate change.
Standing near his flooded neighborhood, with mountains visible in the distance, Duan said he couldn’t return home because the roads were impassable. He guessed it would take days for the water to recede. “I don’t think this is because of global warming,” he said. “It feels more like a once-in-a-century disaster.”
In the hardest-hit parts of Miyun, residents were rescued and taken to schools and government buildings turned into relief centers. But some had to manage on their own.
Li Qingfa, 75, who runs a small guesthouse in the area, said he would have preferred to be relocated, but his guesthouse became an emergency relief site instead. When the floodwaters surged in, he and his wife used bedding, wheat, and rice sacks as makeshift sandbags, ruining over 100kg of grain. “The losses are huge, but there’s nothing we can do,” he said, cleaning muddy water from the guesthouse floors.
Additional research by Lillian Yang.
