Chinese woman risks life over and over, refuses to let dog go in raging flood

A video of a woman clinging to a wall in fast-moving floodwaters, loosening her grip again and again to keep her dog from being swept away, has spread across Chinese social media.

The footage, shared by a user on Weibo, shows her pressed against a wall in a flooded street, holding on with both hands as the current drives into her, according to Hong Kong's Oriental Daily.

Her border collie cannot grip the wall and is dragged loose by the water repeatedly.

Each time the dog is pulled away, she takes one hand off the wall, reaches back and hauls it toward her.

At one point both are swept backward before she steadies them against the current.

About two minutes in, people wade in from a corner and push out a bamboo pole, pulling the woman and the dog to safety.

The clip circulated widely as scenes from the deadly flooding that Typhoon Maysak brought to China's Guangxi region in early July, a link the Global Times and other outlets made. Oriental Daily itself noted the location and date of the footage could not be verified.

搭救洪水中的女人和狗。

这么危险的情况下，女主也不放弃她的狗，在即将冲走的时候，冒险拉回狗子。 pic.twitter.com/VWuYgvwRxL

— 魔都老猿 (@AriXZone) July 8, 2026

Typhoon Maysak swept across Vietnam in early July, downing trees and tearing metal roofs from buildings in the border town of Mong Cai in Quang Ninh, before crossing into China.

As the storm weakened and stalled over the mainland, it dumped the water it had pulled up from the sea onto Guangxi.

Record rainfall on July 6 breached reservoirs in Hengzhou, a city under the jurisdiction of the regional capital Nanning, and a partial dam collapse sent torrents through the area, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Nanning vice mayor Ding Wei announced the toll at a briefing: at least 39 people dead across Guangxi by July 9, with around 130,000 evacuated, Al Jazeera reported.

Most of the deaths, 26 of them, came from the dam breach in Hengzhou, and the count had climbed sharply from an earlier tally of six, according to CBS News.

The water scattered animals across the region.

More than 100 escaped a zoo in nearby Guigang, among them zebras and porcupines, while venomous snakes washed out of local breeding farms into Hengzhou's streets, prompting authorities to stock antivenom, CNN reported.

The floods also produced scenes of people refusing to leave animals behind.

In Nanning, animal shelter owner Mo Xingjian waded alone through the floodwaters to evacuate his cats and dogs, carrying the dogs out two at a time and lifting cats onto walls and rooftops above the rising water, state broadcaster CGTN reported.