Students use their umbrellas as containers for shoes and walk bare-footed on the campus of Tongji University in Shanghai on Wednesday. Yang Bo / for China Daily

Netizens uploaded photos of people fishing in the middle of the road to news website Xinmin.cn.

In Dahua, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, 16,000 pigs drowned at a farm flooded on Sunday by heavy rainstorms, leaving authorities with the difficult task of disposing of the carcasses.

Wang Lin, the Liuye township farm's manager, said the rain came too fast for an evacuation. Thousands of carcasses floated in the floodwaters. Pigs that survived the flooding crawled to the shore or climbed to safety on rooftops.

Such a large number of animals drowning in a single event is unprecedented in the region, said Nong Yingxiang, an official with the local animal health watchdog.

Though the pigs died from a natural disaster, limiting the risk of spreading disease, Nong said carcasses decay faster at high temperatures and could pollute rivers if not cleaned up quickly.

Heavy rains have lashed much of South China over the past few weeks, causing floods and landslides, bringing down buildings and destorying crops in the region.

The latest rainstorms in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region have killed eight people and left three others missing, local authorities said on Tuesday.

Li Xueqing in Shanghai contributed to this story.