My Dad and I were musing this weekend about how close or not my brother is to the massive flooding in China. Noticing another reference to Jiangxi Province in that latest Xinhua article, I decided to do some sleuthing.

That’s him in the green building. Most of the worst is way to the south and east of him but that latest big dike burst (the wavy lines) is only about 160 kilometers to the south. If there was flooding in the Maple Valley today, would I be too worried? So, no immediate concern— but, really, can water be far from your mind in a city named Nine Rivers?

(Before anybody jumps on my back— yes, there is another, bigger city named Fuzhou closer to the coast but that’s not the one the Fuhe River goes through. Finding Chinese locations in Google Maps is pretty frustrating for this honky, though; place names seem to appear and disappear at random and others seem to show up in multiple, widely separated places. How could anyone ever cope?)