Podcast: In Beijing's Deadly Floods, This Hotel Owner Stayed to Save His Guests
🎙️ This Podcast features a human story in the deadly floods that struck Beijing in the summer of 2025. It draws from a variety of sources that offer a deeper dive into the causes and consequences of the disaster and its failed management.
🌊 Skyscrapers in a vortex, bridges broken in two… On social media, these dramatic AI-generated images of the deadly floods in Beijing in summer 2025 caught millions of views, appearing at the top of your search results.
🏠 Yet the real voices of the disaster-hit population are less heard. This episode takes you onto the rooftop of a flooded hotel in Beijing, where a hotel owner and his twenty-some guests spent the night of July 26 as muddy torrents submerged everything beneath.
🤝 In a moment of life and death, when no rescue forces could be reached, and your guests were crying for help, what would you do? For our hotel owner, Tsui Jian, the answer was straightforward: staying there and saving lives.
Cover Photo: AFP
Journalist: Yuqing Yang
Editor: Lorraine Besse
Sources:
Music - Epidemic Sound, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Sounds and Soundbites - AFP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, France 24, the BBC
Information - Xinhua News Agency, CCTV, The Epoch Times, Beijing Daily, South China Morning Post, RFI, The New York Times, Chinese social media posts