The night was deep, and Reporter Wang and his assistant Xiao Chen rode back in a truck transporting rescue supplies.
Illuminated by the car headlights, every village they passed was eerily silent, with each household's gate wide open (to reduce the impact when the flood strikes, protecting the houses), unusually cold and still.
Around the villages were mostly flourishing cotton fields, lush green rice paddies, and vast patches of blooming lotus flowers. Occasionally there were chickens chasing and pigs rooting around, but no people, not a single one!
There's an old saying, "Nine out of ten rooms are empty."
Here, it's not nine out of ten rooms empty, but all ten out of ten.
Fortunately, the Yang Liu Section dike was held, otherwise, the "internal transfer" to nearby towns and the "external transfer" to neighboring counties of hundreds of thousands of people would truly be homeless.
Reporter Wang felt exceptionally heavy-hearted.
