Rapid urban migration and development are a major cause of urban flooding in Chinese cities each year, especially during the summer months.
As many as 180 cities across the country suffered similar floods between 2012 and 2015. In the first half of this year, heavy rain and floods affected 17.7 million people in 24 provinces, causing 134 deaths, destroying 24,000 homes, and resulting in a direct economic loss of 29.3 billion yuan (S$6 billion).
The picture is equally grim in other Asian countries, where hastily built urban areas are equally prone to massive flooding.
In South Asia, more than 1,400 people were killed in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, and millions were made homeless between June and September this year, in one of the region's worst flooding disasters in a decade.
And in Vietnam, lax policing over construction projects in new urban areas is being blamed for its flooding woes. Nowadays, during heavy downpours lasting two to three hours, many roads in Hanoi become "rivers", said former deputy minister of construction Pham Sy Liem recently.
He added that developers flouted building regulations and ignored the need for proper drainage systems, for the sake of profits.
This has led to more serious flooding in the new residential areas outside the capital Hanoi, compared with the Old Quarter in the city, which was built about a century ago.
According to a study commissioned by the Asian Development Bank in 2012, about 245 million urban Asians were at risk of inland flooding in 2010, and this number is likely to reach 341 million by 2025.
Water resources engineering expert Zhang Xiang, from Wuhan University, said: "As more people move into the cities, the forests, grass patches, ponds and lakes are replaced by roads and buildings.
"Gone is the natural green infrastructure that could absorb rainwater or slow the flow of water into the drainage system. On concrete and asphalt grounds, the rainfall becomes surface run-off, and the speed of flow is much faster.
"When that happens, the rapid build-up of water simply overwhelms the pumping stations, which can't work fast enough to release water into the rivers or lakes."
Flooding in the southern Chinese cities during the summer has become almost commonplace.
And the problem is spreading. Even arid Beijing in the north was hit by a flash flood in July 2012, in which 79 people died.
In a bid to solve the problem, Chinese President Xi Jinping in December 2013 said cities should be built like "sponges" to soak up 70 per cent of rainwater. Concrete surfaces were to be replaced by permeable materials and green spaces such as rain gardens to absorb and filter rainfall.