A Battle of Wills at the Lake

It kept raining and raining.

Then the water crept into the house and climbed up their thighs.

“We didn’t have time to take anything,” said Wan Yunyong, 46, a resident who fled the shores of China’s second-largest freshwater lake last week. “Everything we owned washed into the big river.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes here in southern China’s Hunan province in a summer of floods that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives across the country and left more than a million people homeless. Another million soldiers and volunteers have rushed to their aid, shoring up dikes as flood waters continued to rise to near-record levels.

After a few days of clear skies, more rain could strike the area today, dangerously coinciding with the cresting of flood waters charging down the Yangtze River into Dongting Lake.

“Every year it floods, and every year we run,” said Wan’s husband, Li Yueping, as he stood Saturday in a condemned warehouse where his family and about 200 other neighbors had sought shelter. “We are tired of running.”

“But we could be pushed out again this weekend,” his wife fretted.

Unfortunately, flooding is a way of life in this part of China. The 1,400-square-mile Dongting Lake not only links up with the mighty Yangtze but acts as a giant buffer against its chronic overflows.

However, the lake’s flood control capacity has been compromised over the years by intense human settlement, the buildup of sediment and poor dike maintenance.

The controversial Three Gorges Dam, under construction now, was designed to alleviate this ritual of disaster across the Chinese heartland. But it won’t be completed for at least seven years.

About 37 floods have been recorded in this area in the last half a century or so. The worst hit in 1998, when banks along both the Yangtze and the Dongting burst. More than 4,000 people died as a result.

So far, authorities do not expect the same level of catastrophe this year. But with the Dongting having reached 6 feet above danger level, millions of people are potentially in harm’s way.

Local officials have declared a state of emergency for the entire province and have vowed to defend the banks with their lives.

“The danger level could persist for at least another 10 to 14 days,” the provincial party chief told a local newspaper. “We must prepare for a long and difficult battle ahead.”

Already the provincial capital, Changsha, has been under attack. It stands on the banks of one of the four rivers that rush into the Dongting. About 3,000 people living on an island in the middle of the city had to be evacuated when their low-lying homes sank into the swelling river.

Over the weekend, caravans of soldiers darted along bumpy rural highways, braving a punishing heat wave to troubleshoot along Dongting Lake’s nearly 600 miles of dikes. Young cadets shoveled gravel and passed sandbags in assembly lines to hold back weak walls. Peasants jumped into the water to plug small leaks, sometimes using bedding and even doors.

The Red Cross Society of China has appealed for help around the country, and donations of money and goods to the agency and others have totaled more than $6 million. But supplies ranging from tents to food are running low.

“The world paid a lot of attention to the floods in Europe, as they should,” said Yang Xusheng, a Red Cross official based in Beijing. “It’s closer to their doorstep. But I wish they would also pay more attention to us.”

If embankments fail to hold during the crisis point today, the city of Yueyang and its 600,000 residents could be in big trouble. It lies where the Dongting meets the Yangtze.

But life there hummed along as usual Saturday.

A crowd gathered in the middle of one street, lighting firecrackers and greeting a bride. Old people danced beneath an elevated freeway. Families stood in line for burgers at the local McDonald’s. The landmark pagoda overlooking the swelling Dongting received tourists even as the lower garden area lay drowned by the rising tides.

Away from the city center, however, some smaller communities already were submerged. In the district of Chenglingji, low-rise homes and storefronts had been reduced to pointy shingled roofs adrift like lamp shades in a swimming pool. Waves lapped against the leaves of maple trees that looked as short as potted plants.

Boys swam freestyle in flood water the color and clarity of split pea soup. A mother breast-fed her baby. Knots of people fished, from rooftops, in wooden bathtubs. One man dangled a hook from the roof of a flooded public toilet.

Squatters in abandoned buildings said they had stuck around because there was no place else to go.

They had seen armies of aid workers and carloads of government officials inspecting disaster areas. But only on television.

“Nobody told us where or when to go, and nobody came to help,” said Zo Binshan, 48. “We just ran to the highest place we could.”

Their savior turned out to be a local eyesore that was supposed to have been bulldozed long ago. The four-story former headquarters of the local grain depot was halfway demolished when officials ran out of money. Squatters had covered gaping holes left by the wrecking ball with plastic tarp or clotheslines hung with laundry.

“Thank God this building is still here, or else we refugees wouldn’t have any place to hide,” said Zo, who used to own a food stall. Now, he said, there was nothing for him to do besides nap, fish or play mah-jongg like the other adults in the floating ghost town.

Down one dark corridor of the building, a man with a large beer belly sat with his shirtless back to the encroaching waters, calmly repairing his fishing pole.

“We’ve been through it so many times we don’t get scared anymore,” said the off-duty security guard, surnamed Li. “That’s why we call ourselves ‘sparrows on the Dongting’--small but brave.”