On the Front Lines of Emergency Rescue: The Flood-Fighting Experiences of Three Post-2000 Soldiers
Young Shoulders, Burning Convictions (青春的肩膀 滚烫的初心)
Editor's Note: This summer's flood season, affected by typhoons and other extreme weather, severe rainstorm and flooding disasters struck multiple locations across northern and southern China. At the moment of peril, the people's soldiers moved at the first order, rushing to the rescue through the night, racing against time to reinforce embankments, evacuate civilians, clear silt, and eliminate hazards—building with their flesh and blood a steel Great Wall to protect the lives and property of the people.
Visiting frontline units engaged in emergency rescue operations, reporters found young faces everywhere. At the most dangerous points where pipe bursts (管涌) erupted frequently and breaches were critical, at the most forward positions where torrents raged and mud made movement nearly impossible, young officers and soldiers of the new era stepped forward and advanced toward danger, demonstrating through their actions the oath of the people's army to serve the people, and radiating the brilliance of a youth forged into steel and equal to great responsibilities.
Young shoulders, burning convictions (青春的肩膀，滚烫的初心). From the flood-fighting experiences of many soldiers, we have selected the stories of three post-2000 soldiers to share with our readers.
[Photo caption: Han Shuai (fourth from right), a soldier of a brigade under the 75th Group Army, and his comrades prepare to launch a rescue operation. Photo by Huang Yuanli.]
Han Shuai, soldier of the "Infiltration Heroes Company" (穿插英雄连), a brigade under the 75th Group Army——
"Someone Once Sheltered Me from the Wind and Rain"
■ Fan Hongxing, Huang Yuanli
In the notebook of Han Shuai, a soldier of the "Infiltration Heroes Company" of a brigade under the 75th Group Army, there is a colorful card tucked between the pages—given to him by a primary school student after he participated in the emergency rescue mission in Guigang, Guangxi, in early July. On the card, a childlike hand had drawn the image of a soldier, and written stroke by stroke: "PLA uncle, you've worked so hard. You are our 'Superman.'"
In July of this year, Super Typhoon "Maysak" struck Guigang, Guangxi, causing severe rainstorm and flooding disasters in multiple areas. The "Infiltration Heroes Company" in which Han Shuai serves received an emergency rescue mission and pushed into Guigang overnight in the rain.
"At the time, urban waterlogging was very serious, and many residential areas were flooded," Han Shuai said. Hearing that one family had been trapped for four days, he volunteered to go to their rescue.
The trapped family included both elderly members and an infant. After officers and soldiers transferred them onto an assault boat, they chose to jump into the water and push the hull forward. Han Shuai explained: "There are many buildings and debris in the urban area, and many hidden currents underwater. Driving the assault boat directly makes it easy for it to be caught on submerged stakes and capsize." Pushing the assault boat forward by hand was not significantly slower, but considerably safer.
"That day I was basically soaking in the water the whole time, so I didn't help hold the baby." Speaking of the family they evacuated, Han Shuai still remembered the infant who was held in its mother's arms the entire time. While transferring the trapped civilians, he deliberately pushed the assault boat on the side closest to the infant, doing his best to steady the hull and prevent it from rocking or capsizing. "With a child on board, you absolutely have to be especially careful," Han Shuai said.
During the two days carrying out the mission in Guigang, Han Shuai and his company comrades fought continuously, cumulatively evacuating more than 800 disaster-affected civilians to safety and efficiently completing tasks including street silt clearance and factory-area debris removal.
The wholehearted dedication of the officers and soldiers was met with the genuine warmth of the people: Ms. Zhang, a local resident, made a special point of rising early to bring more than a hundred servings of steaming millet porridge to the officers and soldiers; many civilians spontaneously brewed ginger-sugar water to warm the soldiers against the cold; one kind-hearted woman, seeing Han Shuai clearing construction rubble with his bare hands, insisted on giving him a pair of protective gloves—and when he politely declined, her eyes reddened as she repeatedly urged him to stay safe……
On the day the mission ended and they were leaving Guigang, students from Guigang City Yulin Road Primary School came to see the flood-fighting soldiers off. One primary school student pressed the card she had drawn into Han Shuai's hands.
"I wasn't thinking about much while carrying out the mission. It was only when the civilians and students came en masse to see us off that I realized we had become the ones sheltering others from the wind and rain," Han Shuai said. Because just a few years earlier, he had been the one being protected——
In July 2021, Zhengzhou, Henan, was struck by an extraordinary rainstorm. Han Shuai, then a second-year university student, was trapped at a highway toll station on his way home.
"I was trapped for a full 24 hours. None of the travelers stranded at the toll station dared to close their eyes." At the moment of crisis, military officers and soldiers arrived in assault boats. That camouflage green in the curtain of rain became a color Han Shuai has never been able to forget.
Did his decision to enlist after graduating from university have anything to do with that experience? Faced with this question, Han Shuai smiled and answered: "Definitely."
In 2023, Han Shuai joined the heroic company and became an armored soldier. During his service, he was recognized as an outstanding "Four-Haves" (四有) soldier. Two years later, he passed the comprehensive assessment for non-commissioned officer promotion with outstanding results and chose to remain in the military.
Han Shuai said the card the primary school student gave him reminded him of the resolve he had when he first enlisted: "Someone once sheltered me from the wind and rain; now it is my turn to guard the safety of ten thousand families. Just as the little one said, I want to be their 'Superman.'"
[Photo caption: Li Xiaokang, a soldier of the Mobile Detachment of the People's Armed Police Guangxi Corps, during training. Photo by Pu Luchuan.]
Li Xiaokang, soldier of the Mobile Detachment of the People's Armed Police Guangxi Corps——
"It's Fine, I'm a Soldier"
■ PLA Daily Reporter Guo Shudong, Special Correspondent Chen Xin
"Son, you're a soldier now. You have your own responsibilities……"
"Mom, don't worry. Your son has grown up. He can do something for the people now."
More than a month later, recalling the phone call he had with his mother after being injured during the mission, Li Xiaokang, a soldier of the Mobile Detachment of the People's Armed Police Guangxi Corps, reddened around the eyes once more.
In early July, Typhoon "Maysak" struck Guangxi, triggering frequent rainstorm and flooding disasters across the region. After the floodwaters receded, they left behind mud and debris everywhere. On July 8, the Mobile Detachment of the People's Armed Police Guangxi Corps received orders to proceed to Gangtang Town, Binyang County, to clear silt.
Standing in formation, soldier Li Xiaokang felt a faint sweat in his palms. Having enlisted in March and received his rank insignia in early June, he was facing his first emergency rescue mission—and it was a tough one.
After two days of continuous fighting to restore road access, the unit rapidly shifted to disaster-affected residential areas. Many residents' homes were in complete disarray, with furniture and belongings soaking in muddy water. Granny Wei's home was no different: when the heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout the town, she had taken shelter on the second floor; now, facing the first floor that had been submerged by floodwaters, Granny Wei—alone at home—was at a loss. "Don't worry, we will definitely help you get the house cleaned up!" Li Xiaokang and his comrades stepped forward to help.
The sooner it was cleaned up, the sooner the people could return to normal life—just as Li Xiaokang and his comrades were working together to lift a refrigerator mired in silt onto a flatbed cart, his feet suddenly slipped, he lost his balance, and the refrigerator came crashing down squarely onto the top of his foot.
Taking off his rain boot, Li Xiaokang found that the top of his foot had already swollen. The moment his sole touched the ground, the pain was unbearable.
The medic hurried to treat his foot injury, and the company political instructor sent him to rest at the rest point. But watching the busy figures of his comrades not far away, listening to the clanging of shovels and the rushing of water outside, Li Xiaokang could not sit still: "Everyone is working. How can I be the only one resting here?"
After sitting for just a few minutes, Li Xiaokang put on his mask, pulled his cap brim low, and "slipped back" into the silt-clearing team. But his limping gait gave him away, and before long his squad leader spotted him.
At the rest point, facing a media camera, Li Xiaokang said: "It's just a minor injury, a minor injury—I'll be able to work again in a moment." After this video was uploaded online, people from across the country praised the soldiers.
"On the second evening, I used the political instructor's phone to call my mom," Li Xiaokang said. His mother had seen the video and cried. "She said, you're a soldier now, you have your own responsibilities……"
His mother's words aligned perfectly with Li Xiaokang's own thinking. At the silt-clearing site, after he was injured, Granny Wei had come over to stop Li Xiaokang—who still wanted to pick up a shovel—and urged him: "Child, your foot is like that—just rest for a bit!"
At that moment, Li Xiaokang replied: "It's fine, I'm a soldier."
"It was a completely instinctive response at the time," Li Xiaokang said. Although he had only been in the military for just over three months, having gone through recruit training and stepped onto the front lines of emergency rescue, facing civilians who had suffered a natural disaster, in that moment his sense of the responsibility a soldier bears felt exceptionally clear.
[Photo caption: Guo Hanrui (left), a soldier of the Yanbian Detachment of the People's Armed Police Jilin Corps, connects a portable generator for a civilian family. Photo by Li Dongrui.]
Guo Hanrui, soldier of the Yanbian Detachment of the People's Armed Police Jilin Corps——
"We Came to Help, Not to Make More Work"
■ Zhang Guoqing, PLA Daily Reporter Li Qingtong
After the silt-clearing and obstacle-removal mission ended, Guo Hanrui, a soldier of the Yanbian Detachment of the People's Armed Police Jilin Corps, had a comrade copy him a recording video from the mission site. Guo Hanrui said this was his first time participating in a flood-fighting and emergency rescue mission, and it held special commemorative significance.
"There was another reason—what the granny said to me at the time moved me deeply, and I wanted to keep it," Guo Hanrui said.
In mid-July of this year, influenced by the peripheral moisture transport of Typhoon "Bavi," heavy to torrential rain fell across central and eastern Jilin Province, with road damage and people trapped occurring in multiple counties and cities.
"Our detachment was deployed after the rain stopped, primarily responsible for silt clearance and obstacle removal in Dunhua," Guo Hanrui explained. When they arrived, the streets and lanes of Dunhua looked as though they had been wrapped in mud; ankle-deep black silt covered the asphalt roads everywhere, and a pungent smell hit them in the face.
As the soldiers were swinging their shovels to clear the silt, Granny Wang, who lived nearby, rushed over to seek their help—Granny Wang's husband had been paralyzed for many years and depended entirely on an electric nursing bed for repositioning and care. But when the rainstorm struck, the entire residential compound lost power, and the equipment had been stopped for a full three days; her husband had already developed bedsores on his back, and she had no choice but to turn to the soldiers for help.
Guo Hanrui immediately took her to find the mission commander and reported the situation. The detachment coordinated the delivery of a portable generator in just 15 minutes, which was handed to Guo Hanrui and four comrades to install at Granny Wang's home.
"The generator couldn't go upstairs, so it had to be placed downstairs. That meant we had to go upstairs and move the nursing bed to the window, then run the power cord in through the window," Guo Hanrui recounted the situation at the time.
Before entering Granny Wang's home, Guo Hanrui thought for a moment and took off his rain boots, leaving them outside the door. After half a day of silt-clearing work, the soles were caked with a thick layer of mud and the uppers were splattered with muddy slurry; if they walked around inside the room, Granny would have to spend considerable effort mopping the floor afterward.
"At the time I just thought, Granny's home has a sick person in it, and cleaning up is so exhausting. We came to help—we can't make more work," Guo Hanrui said.
Once inside, Guo Hanrui busied himself confirming the equipment connections and linking the nursing bed to the generator. Granny Wang settled her husband in the bed, then turned around to find that all the soldiers had taken off their rain boots—and even their socks were wet.
"Granny got flustered right away and immediately rummaged through her home to find several pairs of new socks to hand out to us." Recalling the scene, Guo Hanrui broke into a smile. "Granny said, you've come from so far away to help us, you won't even drink a sip of water—how can I let you walk around in wet socks?"
Unable to refuse, the soldiers changed into dry cotton socks and worked together to move the electric nursing bed to the window and connect it to the power cord run up from downstairs. A dozen or so minutes later, the steady hum of the generator rose from outside the building, and the indicator lights on the nursing equipment lit up one by one. Guo Hanrui and his comrades checked the wiring repeatedly, confirmed there were no safety hazards, carefully explained the operating precautions to Granny, and only then returned to the silt-clearing work site.
In the act of removing one pair of boots and putting on another, the mutual devotion (双向奔赴) between the soldiers and the people was witnessed. Company Political Instructor Song told reporters that many of the soldiers were participating in emergency rescue and silt-clearing missions for the first time; they fought day after day without ever complaining. "On the front lines of emergency rescue, they have already shouldered the burden and become soldiers the people can trust."