Current weeks have seen excessive climate throughout central and southern China, significantly in Guangxi, the place a dam breach led to at the least 26 deaths. These occasions sparked widespread on-line dialogue about accountability for human failings that exacerbated the harm; lionization of rescue efforts as a distraction from these failings; official euphemisms corresponding to "a spot appeared" for the dam breach; the function of home media; and reflexive hostility to international reporting. A lot of this has been censored; a few of it has been archived and translated by CDT.
Within the midst of this, final week introduced the fifth anniversary of the lethal 2021 floods in Zhengzhou, Henan. A leaked media directive confirmed the everyday playbook: "Relating to the heavy rain placing Henan and different locations, shift the main focus of reporting towards post-disaster restoration […] don’t publish unauthorized photos exhibiting useless our bodies, take an exaggeratedly sorrowful tone, or hype or draw connections to previous occasions." In early 2022, China’s State Council launched the outcomes of an investigation that sharply criticized native authorities, partially for obscuring the dying toll, however when the primary anniversary arrived months later, censorship and opacity reigned once more.
Most of the themes in translated commentary on the 2021 floods have resurfaced this 12 months. As commentator Xiang Dongliang wrote in a beforehand translated submit on the present floods: "All of this should be frequent sense by now. However right here we’re in 2026, and we’re having to reiterate it but once more, which is really lamentable."
The 2 censored posts translated beneath show an analogous eager for accountability and transparency, and replicate upon reminiscence and forgetting in that surroundings. As author Huang Zhijie, beneath the pen title "Youyou Luming," concludes within the first submit: "Forgetting usually signifies that an basically similar man-made catastrophe happens once more; that an accident investigation report that got here near the reality turns into only a clean piece of paper."
In the present day is July 20, 2026.
This marks the fifth anniversary of the July 20, 2021 ("720") Zhengzhou floods.
To be sincere, I actually don’t know what to say.
I had truly forgotten all about it.
The very first thing I remembered was that "Raincoat Dad," whose actual title continues to be unknown.
That 12 months on July 27, the seventh day after the deaths, a person sat quietly outdoors Shakoulu station on Line 5 of the Zhengzhou Metro. He wore a darkish blue raincoat, black sun shades, and a blue facemask with a gap reduce on the mouth. Subsequent to him, propped towards his parked bicycle, was a chunk of cardboard studying: "Niuniu, Daddy nonetheless desires to convey you dwelling."
He by no means spoke.
The daddy.
[…] Based on a subsequent police investigation, the person was a bit chief at a Zhengzhou work unit, and was the daddy of Zhang __yue, one of many individuals who died on that subway line. The person’s youthful sister stated that he was sporting that raincoat as a result of he had been sporting it when he stated goodbye to his daughter that morning; and the sun shades, as a result of his daughter had given them to him. His masks had a gap as a result of he didn’t need the condensation to fog up his glasses. He had at all times used that bicycle to take his daughter dwelling.
"Niuniu" was his particular pet title for his daughter. Though she was already 27 and married with a two-year-old of her personal, in her father’s eyes, she would at all times be his little lady. "My brother at all times regretted not having taught her to swim, and blamed himself for not discovering out concerning the subway flooding in time. He at all times puzzled whether or not, if he may flip again time, there may need been one thing he may have achieved to vary what occurred."
[…] A complete of 398 individuals died throughout the “720 incident.” Of those deaths, 139 have been hid on the township, county, or metropolis ranges. Based on the State Council’s later investigation, lots of the flooding deaths ought to by no means have occurred, significantly the incident on Line 5 of the Zhengzhou Metro (during which 953 individuals have been trapped, and 14 died) and within the northern tunnel of Zhengzhou’s Jingguang expressway (during which 247 automobiles have been submerged, and 6 individuals died).
Raincoat Dad’s daughter was amongst those that died.
The investigation report stated that the catastrophe was "typically pure, with particular human failings," and that there have been six main points with the related departments:
- Response deployment was neither well timed nor ample;
- Emergency response lagged badly;
- Emergency measures have been imprecise and ineffective;
- Unified command was missing at key moments;
- Group and mobilization have been inadequate;
- Reported numbers of these useless and lacking have been delayed and hid.
At one level afterwards, chrysanthemums left by Zhengzhou residents or despatched from netizens from everywhere in the nation blanketed the bottom far across the subway entrance, and the messages on the playing cards amongst them have been much more transferring. Regardless of efforts by some to impede this, the urge to commemorate the victims was irrepressible.
[…] One card learn: "You handed by means of this world. We keep in mind your bravery!"
A drone picture of yellow bouquets unfold out in entrance of the subway station. Reporters from Caixin and Southern Metropolis Every day have been arrested for taking drone photos of the impromptu memorial.
Why is it that individuals are prepared to persist, to courageous the implications, as a way to specific their grief and commemorate the extraordinary victims of catastrophe?
I believe it’s as a result of these extraordinary workplace employees, these extraordinary daughters, are a lot like ourselves. Their fates struck with out warning, as may occur to any extraordinary particular person.
Individuals who had been trapped on the subway recalled their fellow passengers, after many hours of confinement, starting to indicate indicators of oxygen deprivation—shaking, gasping for breath, and retching—whereas others fainted or suffocated.
Some individuals on-line stated that simply studying these accounts and watching the movies was sufficient to offer them shortness of breath, complications, or insomnia. For some, it evoked the anxieties of the pandemic years.
When individuals see the trivia of those extraordinary victims’ lives, each earlier than and after their passing, their nice sorrow turns into a type of reminiscence.
I’m conflicted.
On one hand, my common behavior is to dig into each element of a significant catastrophe as exhaustively as potential, making an attempt to recollect. On the opposite, I additionally are inclined to overlook all of it as utterly as potential.
As a result of so far as I’m involved, this sort of sorrowful reminiscence is a gigantic burden. I’ve to continually purge it if I’m to return to a traditional emotional state.
If the “post-disaster reconstruction” is this tough for me, an outsider, how should it really feel for individuals from Zhengzhou?
As an outdated media veteran, I appear to know so much—rather more than extraordinary individuals. However I additionally appear to know little or no, to the extent that some nice occasions I witnessed firsthand appear to have left little hint in my reminiscence.
Generally forgetting is as horrible because the catastrophe itself.
Forgetting usually signifies that an basically similar man-made catastrophe happens once more; that an accident investigation report that got here near the reality turns into only a clean piece of paper; that the bicycle that carried a toddler, a father’s raincoat, the sun shades his daughter gave him … it signifies that all these particulars will come into our view as soon as extra.
Could we who’ve lived by means of catastrophe keep away from additional catastrophe; and, having grasped the human causes of disaster, could we keep away from man-made disaster in future.
Youyou Luming, July 20, 2026 [Chinese]
The second submit is by Henan-born, Chengdu-based author Zhang Feng, the proprietor of a celebrated impartial bookstore that narrowly escaped closure final 12 months. Zhang famous that many of the commemorative posts he had seen made no calls for for accountability, however have been deleted anyway.
Within the bookstore in the present day, I heard a pair of younger girls sighing: "I can’t imagine it’s been 5 years because the Zhengzhou floods."
I used to be amazed—I hadn’t anticipated that younger of us in Chengdu would nonetheless keep in mind it. "What do you keep in mind of it?" I requested them.
"There was a father ready for his daughter on the subway station, simply ready, for days and days."
I paid shut consideration to the Zhengzhou floods on the time, and wrote two items about them, considering that if the police in my hometown wished to return and arrest me for it, then allow them to. However I don’t even do not forget that element.
These two younger girls most likely bought their data by means of totally different channels, constructing their very own picture of the "Zhengzhou floods."
I’ve seen plenty of movies and articles commemorating the Zhengzhou floods within the final couple of days. There have been plenty of feedback relating particulars of that point, principally expressions of gratitude or calls to recollect the town’s struggling. I noticed virtually no abuse, or calls for for accountability.
Sadly, most of these movies and posts have been deleted. As somebody from Henan, I’m sorry to see this.
Zhengzhou is a big metropolis that’s developed so much over the previous 20 years. I do not forget that once I left for college in 1997, Zhengzhou hardly merited a point out amongst China’s cities, however now, within the age of high-speed rail and cellular web, it’s seen as a hub.
However it’s not a metropolis whose spirit will stir your soul.
I do know there’s a fairly good music about it, "Reminiscence About Zhengzhou," a pleasant tune [embedded below; by banned folk singer Li Zhi]. Chengdu seized on the Zhao Lei music that’s named for it; once I was in Flushing, New York, and heard somebody singing "Chengdu" on the street, I couldn’t assist however get misty-eyed.
However I’ve seen no signal of Zhengzhou making an attempt to capitalize by itself music that manner.
It’s an analogous story with commemoration of the floods. Cruel floodwaters introduced catastrophe, however a part of it was man-made, or revealed shortcomings within the metropolis’s building, and these prompted additional misfortune. But when a metropolis have been to determine a "Flood Memorial Corridor" to inform the story of the catastrophe and remind guests of its classes, that may be fully to its credit score.
I even have an concept for such a memorial corridor. It could possibly be positioned in a subway station, and use superior tools to create a sort of "drowning expertise." The names of the victims could possibly be listed, so we might always remember them. Commemorative gadgets could possibly be displayed; the deeds of "heroic residents" could possibly be recorded.
In any case, a metropolis finally belongs to its individuals. Changing into its "citizen" isn’t just a matter of shopping for a home or possessing a family registration; it additionally includes studying the town’s traditions and tradition, and the hardships she has suffered. The individuals of a spot have shared emotions and shared sorrows, which may turn into ingrained as a type of "native dialect."
It’s like Chengdu in 2008. If you happen to have been right here [during the Wenchuan earthquake] in 2008; in the event you noticed or heard about household and mates who died; in the event you grieved and have been heartbroken, but additionally reached out your palms to others, then how may you not love her?
In that sense, I’m happy with Zhengzhou. The straightforward undeniable fact that so many individuals haven’t forgotten provides you a bit of extra confidence. [Chinese]
