36. Recovery and Toll
When the waters finally receded, survivors were left with a floodplain heaped with loess mud up to eight feet deep. As it dried out, the region looked more like the Sahara Desert, rather than the green and fertile agricultural plain it had been just a few days earlier. China in 1887 was ruled by a hapless and wholly inept imperial government on its last legs. It lacked both the organizational skills and resources for the massive rescue, recovery, and rebuilding effort called for.
Nonetheless, the farmers were familiar with the routines of dike repair. They came together by the hundreds of thousands, using whatever tools they could lay their hands on, and their bare hands when tools were unavailable, to repair the dikes before the next rainy season. It was not until early 1889 that the dikes were finally closed. By then, between drowning, diseases, and famine, the Yellow River flood had killed over 900,000 people.