Father & son fighting on frontline of flood control

The Yigong Embankment is a section of the Yangtze River Dike, guarding the east gateway of Jiujiang city in East China's Jiangxi province. In the event of water calamities, not only the adjacent farmland will be flooded, but the city's main urban area will also be threatened.

In 1998, on this dike, a man wearing a straw hat was patrolling back and forth day and night. His name is Chen Shentao, and he was the Party secretary of Jiangji village, in the city's Xingang town.

He was 40 years old that year, and he patrolled the levee for more than two months fighting floods and violent waves, eliminating more than 100 spots of danger, and excavating more than 400 herringbone ditches. In that year, the Yigong Embankment withstood the once-in-a-century great flood.

Chen and his fellow villagers had been fighting the floods for more than three months. Due to his outstanding performance in fighting floods, Chen won many honors including "1998 National Models of Flood Fighting" and "Jiangxi Province Flood Fighting Heroes". That year, his son was only 14 years old.

Chen Shentao turns 62 this year. But when the ruthless flood struck again, Chen chose to guard his homeland with practical actions once again under the oath that "if the flood does not recede, he will never leave the embankment".

Xingang town has been one of the hard-hit areas in this summer's flood season. Although Chen has long retired, he decided to join the flood fighting team with his son Chen Jian who works in the local government. The father and son are mainly responsible for guarding the Dongsheng Embankment and assisting the town officials in dealing with flood situations.

Strict inspection of the embankment is Chen's top priority, and the day shift and the evening shift rotate by 12 hours. Every time Chen goes to the embankment, he does not forget to pin on his left chest the Party emblem that he has kept wearing for many years, and he always reminds himself that he is a Communist Party member. "I think this is where my duty lies. Although my personal strength alone is little, if everyone has such a strong belief, then we can definitely keep the dike and the city," he says.

Even in hot and humid weather, Chen is unwilling to be left behind. Chen's hands are covered with itchy red bumps by mosquitoes, but Chen is very pleased to see that his son looks so much like him back then.

Chen Jian is a staff member of the Lianxi district's veteran affairs bureau and a member of the district's retired servicemen's flood control commando team. "When I was young, I always listened to my father's stories about fighting the floods. I didn't expect to be able to go up there with him," says Chen Jian. His father's heroic past had a great influence on him. "I still remember that he used to go to the embankment before and did not go home for a long time. My mother said that Dad was fighting the flood to keep Jiujiang."

The father once told his son that a person's strength is insignificant. "Even if he is cast in iron, he can't beat a few nails", let alone stop this monstrous flood. "Dad told me to be a good person and keep my feet on the ground," Chen Jian says. This was what his grandfather told his father, and his father told him again. He has always remembered and kept the sentence as a family motto.

"My father had been fighting the floods on the embankment 22 years ago. When he came back, I could hardly recognize him. Now, I can fight side by side with my father, which is a happy thing," Chen Jian says.