Final heroic trek forged in mud, sweat

A kindhearted kid

Dang Qing traces his son's empathy back to early childhood.

He remembers the little boy who used to hold his hand while strolling through the market. If they passed an elderly person struggling to walk, the child would go over to help. When buying vegetables, he'd indicate to his father to buy from elderly vendors.

At age 6, Dang chose to buy a turtle over taking a bumper-car ride, saying the old seller by the roadside must be having a hard time.

In his adult life, Dang's compassion extended to animals and public welfare. Only after his death did his family discover from his mobile payment records that he had been spending more than 60 yuan each month on pet insurance for stray cats, along with recurring automatic donations to clean-water charities.

Late on the night of July 14 while at home in Chengdu, Dang Qing received a call from an unfamiliar Guangxi number. The caller said they were from the local police station and told him Dang Xinrui was unreachable, asking the father to come to Guangxi.

With a sense of foreboding, he immediately bought a ticket.

He arrived on July 16. At the funeral home, he saw his son, still wearing the same clothes from the mountain trek, with his pants and shoes caked in mud.

Dang Qing broke down. "Seeing all that mud, I knew just how hard his journey had been," he said.

He had seen news reports about the severe flooding in Guangxi, but it had never crossed his mind that his son would be involved.

If Dang had told him he was going to Guangxi for disaster relief work when they spoke the night before, he would have tried to stop him. Those days marked the peak of the disaster.

After the tragedy, Dang Qing admitted he initially felt a pang of resentment toward his son.

"Resentment that he was too foolish," he explained, falling silent for a long moment.

"But a relative consoled me: 'Your child did something he was passionate about, something good.' Those words helped me shift my perspective," he said quietly, adding with conviction that he is proud of his son.

Local authorities offered to arrange flights back to Chengdu for Dang Qing. He declined.

Instead, he chose to take the high-speed train from Nanning — deliberately selecting the G3438 train that passes through Meishan East Railway Station.