Early December, four months after the flood, construction workers were trying to rebuild the terraces at western border the village of Taitou, where a destructive torrent had swept through.
The spate of water, brought by a long-lasting torrential rainfall during 18-21 July 2016 that widely affected northern and central China, also attacked the community at the eastern part of the village and claimed eight lives with another three missing.
To the villagers, the flood on 19 July 2016 was unusual because Taitou is located at Jingxing, a county at the western region of the city of Shijiazhuang in Hebei province, with dry climate and little precipitation in average years.
The unexpected heavy rainstorm hit not only Jingxing, but also the counties nearby, Xingtai and Handan, leading to 9.2 million people stranded, 130 people died and 110 missing in Hebei province.
Recalling the disaster, the elderly people in Taitou were still shocked and distressed. As described by the old villagers, lives and properties were 「scratched away」 by the deluge.
Life after the flood was hard for the residents. There once were 30-40 stores in the community, however, only half of them were managed to carry on their business after the incident.
Chen Lijuan, born and raised in Taitou remembered that the commercial street was the busiest place in the village.
The food stores at the commercial street was open again. Liu Mingyuan owned one of them. He said that the damage by the flood cost him about a few hundred thousands Chinese yuan.
Liu Guoyuan once had a garment-processing factory in the village hiring around 20 workers. He could do nothing but laid off his staff and sold all the sewing machines, which were wrecked by the mudslide. Then he went to a southern city of China with his wife and became a migrant worker.
The flood had devastated villager Xu Yueting’s life. He lost his wife, daughter and grandson in the tragic incident.
Reconstruction of road, park, and bridge were going on in Taitou in this winter. According to a reporting from Caixin.com, in late 1960s, villagers started to reclaim an area from the dried out river near the community. It had been 20 years since the previous flooding occurred in Taitou. It was said that the lack of prevention and protection measures had made the situation even more adverse.