After the flood: Beijing residents left to count the cost with little state support

A flooded street in Taishitun, in Beijing’s Miyun district. A year’s worth of rain has fallen on China’s capital in less than a week. Photograph: Andrés Martínez Casares/EPA

Wang Rongying was lying in bed at 6pm on Monday evening when her phone started pinging with messages. Neighbours said that the heavy rainfall Wang could hear outside was starting to cause the water levels on the street to rise to worrying levels. When she opened her front door to see for herself the flood water came rushing in.

“I was so scared … never since the 1980s have I seen such heavy flooding. We didn’t receive any warning in advance,” Wang said, surveying the soaked remains of her two-storey home in Miyun, a district on the outskirts of Beijing that was hit by heavy floods on Monday evening. By midnight, 28 Miyun residents were reported to have died.