Local authorities in several parts of east and central China are mobilizing all resources for emergency flood control and rescue operations as recent heavy rains have battered provinces such as Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, and Hubei.
On Thursday, heavy rainfall occurred in many areas of east China's Jiangxi Province, prompting the province to activate Level-IV emergency response measures.
Many places have managed pre-releases from several reservoirs to make room for expected inflows.
In east China's Anhui Province, Hefei, Lu'an, Wuhu, Xuancheng, Tongling, Chizhou, Anqing, and Huangshan experienced heavy rainfall, with some areas facing severe downpours.
So far, the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters have activated the Level IV emergency response for flood control in these eight cities.
Heavy rainfall battered parts of central China's Hunan Province starting the wee hours of Thursday, causing waterlogging and prompting the evacuation of local residents.
Torrential downpours hit Zhangjiajie and Changde cities in Hunan, and extremely heavy rainfall was reported in parts of Cili County of Zhangjiajie and Taoyuan County of Changde, which led to waterlogging.
Heavy rainfall in Shejiaping Town, Taoyuan County, led to waterlogging by early morning on Thursday. Local authorities organized the evacuation of residents in at-risk zones.
As of 5:00 pm on Thursday, over 5,400 people have been transferred, and over 3,500 disaster-affected people have been relocated in Taoyuan County.
On Thursday, in response to heavy rainfall, railway authorities implemented temporary suspensions for nine trains passing through Longshan County in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.
After the trains were suspended, Longshan North Station promptly broadcasted the information about the train suspension and delay through station announcements and electronic display screens.
In addition, the station opened additional counters and arranged for staff to guide passengers in processing refunds or ticket changes, aiming to minimize passenger delays to the greatest extent.
"Although my trip was delayed, the service at the station was very thoughtful. Staff here has provided patient service, which makes us passengers feel much more at ease," said Liu Rui, a passenger.
Torrential rains pounded many places in central China's Hubei Province on Thursday. The downpour triggered floods across the provincial capital Wuhan, submerging major roads during the busy afternoon.
"We are implementing the two-shift system, with each shift lasting nearly eight hours, to carry out drainage work," said Chen Zongfu, head of the drainage team at Wuhan's Qiaokou District Water Affairs and Lakes Bureau.
Relief work underway as heavy rain hits several regions across China
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
