Troops take a moment for comrade's birthday

Huang Jianing, a soldier who just turned 20, spent his birthday on a riverbank fighting the flooding in Hubei province on Saturday.

During a brief interval in the work, dozens of soldiers sat around a cake on the muddy ground and sang a happy birthday song for Huang, video footage released by their troop shows on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo.

"I hope the flood will go away as soon as possible," Huang said.

The birthday boy said he has been serving in the army for a year and is always expecting to do something meaningful. "I think fighting floods is the thing. Despite a whole night's work, I still feel energetic."

The 55-second video clip got tens of thousands of likes on Weibo, with many netizens wishing Huang happy birthday and safety for him and his fellow soldiers.

Top comments under the footage included "Happy birthday, our hero", "Be sure to return safely", and "It is wonderful that young people born in the 2000s are shouldering the responsibility to protect the people".

On Wednesday, flooding caused a 200-meter breach at a riverbank in a village in Huangmei county, Hubei province, putting villagers' lives in great danger. More than 1,000 soldiers were dispatched to help fight the flood, and Huang was one of them.

Most of the work had to be done by hand because engineering vehicles were unable to approach the riverbank surrounded by soaked farmland. Soldiers had to make wooden structures, fill and then transport sandbags in a relay and pile them up.

On Saturday, the soldiers completed a 200-meter-long, 5-meter-high flood wall, and the breach was closed up.

However, they are still on guard, as heavy rain is expected to continue in Hubei province in the coming days, according to meteorological authorities.