Context: In the past couple of days, the city of Shenzhen has seen incessant rain and flash flooding. Shenzhen recently saw record record-breaking 526.3mm (20 inches) of rainfall in 24 hours. It has broken the record for the maximum rainfall since Shenzhen started meteorological records in 1952. It’s a situation King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya also happened to encounter Shenzhen’s flash floods during their visit to China in 1993.
Synopsis: An old picture of Birendra on a raft has been making rounds on Chinese social media amid the recent Shenzhen floods.
The context of the picture dates back to 1993 during the “9.26” flood of Shenzhen. King Birendra and his wife, Queen Aishwariya had just visited Shenzhen but got stuck in Fulin Hotel in Luohu District. At that time, the mayor of Shenzhen, Li Youwei, had to take off his shoes and wade into the water to meet.
The next day, the Shenzhen government specially dispatched motorboats and rowboats to evacuate the king and queen through their balcony on the second floor helping them safely escape Shenzhen.
This picture has resurfaced again on Weibo amid the recent floods in Shenzhen.
Luohu became a Zeguo (refers to “water town/country). The last time it was this serious was in 1993. This photo has been written into the history of Shenzhen. On September 26 of that year, the King of Nepal, who was staying at the Fulin Hotel on Heping Road, was transferred to a safe place in a small boat in the waterway turned into a driveway.
Some of the netizens have piqued an interesting observation to the event. Here we put one of them :
“I remember that in 1993 when Shenzhen was flooded, we, a group of proletarians, were as excited and optimistic as many current Beidiao. Watching luxury cars being dragged out of the mud-covered basement of Fulin Hotel; watching the king of Nepal pass Heping Road in a boat; making fun of a colleague on the first floor who's already in bed and still sleeping.
But when it was my turn to go to work and swim with cockroaches, mice, and feces, there was no excitement at all, only nausea.”