Young soldier carries on flood-fighting spirit in the military

For Fu Haihong, it seems to be his destiny to fight floods.

Twenty-two years ago, when Fu's mother was seven months pregnant with him, their home, along with the houses of many other families in Sipu village in East China's Jiangxi province, was inundated by floods.

It was PLA soldiers, sent to fight the floods in the region, who transported his mother to safety using a dinghy.

Fu was born after the floods receded. To help the boy remember the gratitude to his rescuers throughout his life, his parents named him "Haihong" - in Chinese "hai" means "sea" and "hong" means "flood".

That year, catastrophic floods across the country killed more than 3,000 people, and destroyed almost 5 million homes.

In 2016, 18-year-old Fu joined the People's Liberation Army. He was proud to find that the battalion he served in was the one honored as a "hero battalion" for fighting the 1998 floods.

"My parents often repeated to me the story of how the PLA soldiers saved my mother. And they encouraged me to help people in need after I grew up, just like the PLA soldiers did for us."

This year, as the strongest floods since 1998 rage in many areas along the Yangtze River, Asia's longest river, Fu and his comrades-in-arms were deployed to combat the floods on the frontline in Yongxiu county of Jiujiang city.

Their mission is to guarantee the safety of a 9-kilometer-long embankment called Guodongwei, a barrier that protects three nearby villages from flooding. The embankment also crosses the Beijing-Kowloon rail line, a national artery railway that connects Beijing and Hong Kong.