NANNING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Deep inside an S-shaped cave in Liuzhou, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Jiang Shengqiang and his team crawled through a passage barely wide enough for a single person.
Some 80 meters underground, a caver with multiple fractures could no longer move. Rescuers drilled through rock to open a route, fixed ropes at several points and placed firefighting jackets beneath the injured man to protect him from the jagged ground as they moved him toward the entrance.
Fifteen hours after the rescue began in February 2025, the man was brought safely to the surface.
For Jiang, captain of a mountain rescue team with the Liuzhou fire and rescue authority, the operation drew on skills he had spent years learning. His pursuit of those skills began with a rescue in 2008.
That year, Jiang and his colleagues were called after a young girl fell from a mountain and became caught in a tree more than 80 meters above the foot of the slope.
Specialized mountain rescue techniques were still largely unfamiliar to the team. The firefighters eventually reached the girl and brought her down, but the process took 10 hours.
"I saw how anxious her parents were, and I felt guilty," Jiang recalled. "Back then, courage was almost all we had. I knew we needed the skills to match."
His first systematic training came in 2016, when he attended a course on water and mountain rescue and was introduced to professional rope techniques.
He dedicated himself to mastering these skills.
With specialized equipment still scarce in his unit, Jiang spent more than 20,000 yuan (about 2,976 U.S. dollars) of his own savings on harnesses, fall-arrest devices and helmets. He bought manuals, studied training videos frame by frame and traveled to courses elsewhere in China whenever he had the chance.
Over the years, thousands of meters of rope were worn out in training. Within little more than two years, Jiang had mastered single- and double-rope techniques. By 2019, he was teaching other rescuers.
The work was also changing around him.
After China's fire and rescue forces were reorganized in 2018, their duties expanded beyond traditional firefighting to a broader range of emergencies. As of July 2021, China had established 179 specialized mountain rescue teams with more than 3,500 personnel, including 752 rescuers qualified in rope rescue, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management.
A national plan for fire and rescue work issued in 2022 called for stronger specialist teams for earthquakes, water and mountain rescue, among other fields.
Guangxi's extensive karst terrain presents particular challenges for rescuers, with steep mountains, caves, sinkholes and underground rivers common across the region. In some cases, difficult terrain and narrow passages make reaching an injured or trapped person a major part of the rescue itself.
In Liuzhou, Jiang began passing on what he had learned.
In 2024, a dedicated rope rescue training unit bearing Jiang's name was established. The training base where he works also became one of three in China's fire and rescue system certified by the Industrial Rope Access Trade Association, a British-based organization that sets training and technical standards for industrial rope access.
Jiang has trained all 20 members of his team. The team has developed more than 10 rescue procedures and modified a system used to reach people stranded by floodwaters, cutting the number of operators required from eight to five. Five of Jiang's proposals were later incorporated into a national rescue training syllabus.
These techniques have been tested far beyond the training grounds.
After the crash of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 in Guangxi in March 2022, Jiang joined the emergency response in Tengxian County. A seven-meter-long section of a wing weighing about 500 kilograms was lodged on a steep, muddy slope and needed to be moved without being deformed.
Jiang and his colleagues built a rope-based lowering system. With little firm footing on the slope, they cleared soil, secured the wreckage and lowered it to an evidence collection area. The operation took four hours.
In August this year, Jiang was working in a very different setting.
Heavy rain had flooded many parts of Ningming County in Guangxi, cutting off villages along the Mingjiang River. Jiang led an advance team across more than 30 kilometers of flooded terrain, at times wading through waist-deep water, to assess conditions and relay information from isolated communities.
He later joined crews evacuating residents by inflatable boat through flooded streets.
During one trip, an elderly resident frightened by the water gripped Jiang's arm.
"It's all right. We're firefighters," Jiang said. "Our boat is safe."
Over 19 years in the fire and rescue service, Jiang has taken part in more than 4,000 emergency operations and helped rescue more than 300 people.
At the mountain rescue training ground in Liuzhou, Jiang still carries a descender that has been with him for six years and used more than 1,000 times. Its metal surface has been rubbed bright.
"We do rescue work," Jiang said. "The better we master our skills, the more we live up to the profession." ■
