Two days after the Chinese solar term of the Beginning of Winter, President Xi Jinping came to the areas flooded this summer in Beijing and neighboring Hebei Province, visiting affected people and inspecting post-disaster reconstruction.
It was a tightly-scheduled inspection trip. On Friday, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, shuttled between the Mentougou District in the western suburb of Beijing and the city of Baoding in Hebei all in one day.
He visited villages and an urban residential community, where he dropped by the homes of the locals. His inspection stops also included a school, a dam, shops, and a farmland.
At the Shuiyuzui Village in Mentougou, learning that floods damaged 87 percent of the households, Xi asked how the restoration was going.
"All the damaged houses have been renovated," a local official answered.
A clean village road led Xi to the home of villager Li Meng. A signboard on the wall showed that the residence was once submerged in water about 2.6 meters deep.
Li told Xi that the summer flood drowned the first floor, leaving his home in mud. But with government subsidies, he managed to repair the two-story house and furnish it with new furniture and appliances.
Xi has always been concerned about those who were affected by the floods, and made important instructions on flood prevention and disaster relief work on multiple occasions.
During an inspection of northeastern Heilongjiang Province in September, he visited a village hit by a flood. He also mentioned the flood-hit areas in north China. "I will visit other affected areas some time later."
Braving the early winter chill, Xi on Friday went on to arrive at a community in Zhuozhou, a county-level city in Hebei that was hit hard by the severe flooding in summer.
He first inspected a heating station there. Learning that the community had received a heat supply half a month ahead of schedule, Xi praised the work to ensure people a warm winter.
He then dropped by the home of resident Dong Caiying, whose apartment on the first floor was soaked in flooding water. Xi looked at the thermometer at Dong's home, touched to check the heat of the radiator heater, and said with a smile, "The temperature is up to standard."
"Seeing that your lives have been restored to normal and even improved, I feel relieved and glad," Xi said.
The Wanquanzhuang Village of Diaowo Township is located at a flood detention and storage area in Baoding. All 311 households suffered the impact of the disaster during this year's flood season, and some houses were washed down or seriously damaged.
But now the village takes on an encouraging look of reconstruction. Villager Fu Jun invited Xi to his to-be-completed new household, showing the president around inside.
Fu told Xi that he received compensation from insurance companies soon after the flood, and the materials used for reconstruction were subsidized.
"Having a visit here today, I feel relieved to see that the policies of the CPC Central Committee have been translated into concrete actions and really worked," Xi said to villagers. "I believe your post-disaster lives will be better."