Donations Pour into Henan to Help Flood Victims

Farmers in Shimen county of Hunan province volunteer to load vegetables onto a truck. The food was donated by local farmer Wang Guoqing to Henan province to help ease suffering from the recent floods. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

People from across China continue to support people in Henan province whose lives have been affected by the devastating recent flood. As of Thursday noon, 99 people had died in connection with the deluge.

Institutions and individuals have donated money and daily necessities to those in heavily affected areas of Henan. Donations have included bottled water, bread, fresh vegetables and disinfectant.

The Ningxia Hui autonomous region recently donated more than 200 tons of materials to Henan, including vegetables, bottled water, quilts and instant noodles.

The town of Minning in Ningxia donated 60 tons of fresh vegetables, which arrived in Xinxiang, Henan, on Monday night. The Red Cross in Ningxia made a donation of about 5.14 million yuan ($794,000) on Tuesday.

Eight trucks loaded with meat, eggs, vegetables, grain and oil in Guyuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, set out for Henan province to support flood victims on Sunday. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The Tibet autonomous region sent donations worth about 500,000 yuan to Henan for flood relief on Tuesday, including 7,000 boxes of bottled water and 30,000 yuan in cash.

In Hunan province, Wang Guoqing, a 50-year-old farmer donated more than 30 metric tons of vegetables for people in Henan on Saturday. His action moved others, and more than 100 of his fellow villagers volunteered to help him harvest the vegetables and load them onto a truck on Sunday.

"I learned from the news that our brothers and sisters in Henan are in difficulty because of the flood, and I had the idea to show my support by donating some vegetables," Wang was quoted as saying.

The truck transporting the fresh vegetables — including white gourds and potatoes — arrived in Xinxiang on Wednesday.

Farmers in Shimen county of Hunan province volunteer to load vegetables onto a truck. The food was donated by local farmer Wang Guoqing to Henan province help ease suffering from the recent floods. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Support and donations have also gathered steam overseas. In New York's Chinatown district (Manhattan) in the United States, more than 50 Chinese Americans from Fujian province held a fund-raising activity on Saturday. Within a few hours, they had gathered more than 244,000 yuan to be donated.

About 13.3 million people in 150 county-level areas of Henan and 16 cities were affected. More than 1 million hectares of crops were affected, and about 1.47 million residents were relocated to safer places. More than 55,000 houses collapsed in the flooding.

As of 4 pm on Monday, charitable organizations and Red Cross societies in Henan province had received a total of 4.95 billion yuan in donations, and 3.87 billion yuan of that has been allocated, according to the Henan provincial government.

Hu Dongmei in Ningxia and Feng Zhiwei in Hunan contributed to this story.