People's interests come first in Yancheng tornado reconstruction

A resettlement named Sunrise Community, which, like others, takes the form of a high-end urban neighborhood. [Photo: Chinaplus/Yin Xiuqi]

People living in mega Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai are very likely to face housing issues—a shortage of homes and unaffordable prices.

But the urban housing problem has a parallel rural version that’s actually dangerous, with unsafe, shabby farmhouses posing a threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of villagers in some parts of China. 

Because of the state of these buildings, when natural disasters like earthquakes, typhoons and tornadoes hit – they don’t stand a chance. 

On June 23rd, 2016, a “rare” tornado flattened or damaged more than 30,000 rural homes in regions administered by the City of Yancheng, in east China’s Jiangsu Province.

Now, a year on, villagers affected by the disaster have mostly moved to fresh new and quality resettlements partly funded by the local government. 

What made the tornado disaster “rare”?

In early June, the dense greenery across Funing County reminds me of southern China, both geologically and culturally.

The county, administered by the City of Yancheng, is a vast plain that stretches as far as the eye can see. 

It’s actually in a transitional geo-cultural region between north and south China, which is divided by the east-west Qinling Mountains and the Huaihe River. 

As I visit the region, the gentle breeze of an early summer’s day makes the sprawling countryside tranquil and peaceful. 

But a year ago, on the afternoon of June 23rd, a fatal tornado hit the region hard. 

Fifty-seven-year-old Wang Youwen, a resident of Chenliang Village in Funing County, recalls what he experienced last year. 

“The sky was dominated by heavy, dark clouds. It was very scary. I didn’t dare to come out to see it. I closed the door and stayed indoors. I had no idea of the consequences. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone inside. 

“I had never seen such a forceful and disastrous tornado. Neither had my parents, you know my mom is 85 years old this year. 

“Fortunately, it turned out that the tornado just caused light damage to my family---only a few tiles were blown off the roof. ”

But one of Wang’s fellow villagers was killed in the disaster, and many houses were completely flattened.  

His fellow villager Wang Youhong, 56, was less lucky. He says his mother-in-law was killed in the disaster although his wife and son survived. 

“My house collapsed because of the tornado. My wife and son were in the house at the time. Luckily, they were ok.”

Some 15 kilometers to the northeast of Chenliang Village, Liu Xiaping, 46, in Lixin Village also witnessed the devastating force of the tornado. 

“The wind got stronger and stronger. I tried to close the doors and windows of my house. After I did this on the second floor and went downstairs, I found the shutter door had been blown out of shape and was on the brink of breaking up. It was completely dark, even though it was during the day. 

“I called a member of my family to help me bolster the door, when I heard the sound of glass breaking. I suddenly knew it was futile and dangerous for us to fight against the wind. So I yelled ‘run’. We rushed to a corner. But my heels got hurt by the flying, broken glass.”

Tragically, Liu’s father-in-law was killed in the disaster. Her two-story house was completely destroyed, which she says amounted to some one million yuan, about 150,000 US dollars. 

The two-story house of Liu Xiaping was reduced to rubble. [Photo: Chinaplus/Yin Xiuqi]

Liu’s village was hit hard by the tornado. Among the 890 families, more than 340 of them were affected—which means one in ten.

Overall, the tornado killed 99 people and injured 875 others in Funing and its neighboring county of Sheyang, according to official figures.  

More than 45,000 residents were affected with about 32,000 houses damaged or collapsed.

Meteorologists recorded the wind force as up to Beaufort scale 17, which means it had a speed of up to 61.2 meters per second. Local officials classed the disaster as “rare”.

The tornado exposed the potential hazards of many of the region’s rural houses, which are mostly built with bricks and lie along river valleys. 

The disaster was particularly hard to accept for people in the area because it happened in one of China’s wealthiest and most modern regions—Jiangsu Province. 

How was the reconstruction work played out?

Straight after the rescue and relief efforts, government-coordinated reconstruction began. 

In Lixin Village, the construction of a resettlement started in late September 2016, just three months after the tornado hit. 

The resettlement site, called New Lixin Village, has 125 stand-alone buildings, which are semi-detached or three-in-a-row two-story ones. The houses range in size from 70 to 140 square meters. 

Unlike traditional Chinese villages, the resettlement took the form of a high-end urban community, with carefully designed buildings, roads, lamplights, green spaces, and so on. 

Local officials say the New Lixin Village can accommodate 375 families, a little more than the number of households affected by the tornado. 

The new houses have been sold to the tornado-affected villagers at a uniform price of 900 yuan per square meter, a huge discount on average market prices. 

In April this year, the houses were allocated to the villagers by lottery as the uniform government-subsidized price scheme restricted free market-based choices. 

Liu Xiaping, whose house was destroyed by the tornado, is satisfied with the scheme.

“The government has given us some subsidy. We ourselves paid a certain amount. My new house is 140 square meters in floor area. We paid more than 70,000 yuan for it. The other 55,000 yuan was funded by the government.”

As I visited the site, Liu’s family was busy decorating the new house. She expected to move into it at the end of June. 

Liu Xiaping expects to move into her government-subsidized new house at the end of this month. [Photo: Chinaplus/Yin Xiuqi]

Wang Youhong, in Chenliang Village, moved to his new 120-square-meter house just before the Chinese New Year Festival of 2017, which fell on January 28th. 

He paid just 46,000 yuan for it thanks to the government subsidy. The villager says the house would have been priced at five to six thousand yuan per square meter, which would have cost him at least 600-thousand yuan. 

Although the new houses are cheap and the resettlements look attractive from the exterior, the key question is whether they are firm enough to withstand natural disasters like last year’s tornado. 

Wu Haiyang, a manager of a construction company for the Chenyang Resettlement in neighboring Sheyang County, explains. 

“There is no design standard for withstanding tornados. But the houses we built here fared very well in some recent weather, with a wind force of up to scale 11. So there’s no problem with the safety of the new buildings in similar weather events.”

Liu Xiaping, in the New Lixin Village, is very confident about the safety of her new house. 

“It can withstand tornadoes. The resettlement site they chose is not prone to tornadoes. The houses are all reinforced concrete structures, which are firmer than the brick houses that we villagers usually built and lived in.”

What are the villagers’ lives like now?

Liu and many of her fellow villagers have been the beneficiaries of a massive government reconstruction project. 

Less than one month after the disaster, the project began under the supervision of the Yancheng city government.

A special reconstruction fund was set up, with officials aiming to raise some 1.1 billion yuan both from public coffers and donations. 

Wang Rongping, the most senior official in Yancheng city, says the project is people-oriented. 

“How to carry out post-disaster reconstruction? Our policies are the key standards that people will use to evaluate us. 

“We have upheld the principle of putting people’s interests first and taking into consideration the actual conditions of the disaster areas and people’s wishes. Through these efforts, we aim to bring as many real benefits to the people as possible.”

The official says that all 20 resettlements will be finished by the end of June.  

Wang adds that the reconstruction efforts are being extended into a three-year project of renovation and resettlement of shabby, unsafe farmhouses. 

As of the end of May, 53,000 new houses had been built under the extended project across regions administered by Yancheng City. 

Overall, the local government aims to benefit a total of 100,000 such rural households in three years.

In Sheyang County, a resettlement named Sunrise Community houses 208 families of both disaster-affected victims and those whose own houses are considered uninhabitable. 

Sun Yaguang, a local official, says the project is well underway on the ground. 

“We include villagers whose houses are shabby and unsafe in this resettlement. Through this project, we intend to improve villagers’ residential conditions and allow them to enjoy the advantages of living together in a modern community.”

Officials of the New Lixin Village want to build a high-end pig farm, providing jobs to the newly-housed villagers. [Photo: Chinaplus/Yin Xiuqi]

As most of the disaster-affected villagers have moved into their new homes, new tasks lie ahead.

Chen Hongming, head villager of the New Lixin Village, has a plan in mind. 

“The villagers’ lives have gradually gone back to normal. Next, the priority will be how to help them make a decent living. We have been thinking hard about this. We are considering building a high-end pig farm, providing jobs to our villagers. ”

There is a large economic gap between the northern and southern regions of Jiangsu Province.

Situated in the north of the province, Funing County recorded an average disposable income of just above 15,000 yuan per capita for its rural residents last year. 

During the same period, the figure for a rural resident in the city of Suzhou, in the southern part of Jiangsu, is almost as twice as that.