When Bai Haiyan and his companions ate at a restaurant near the airport in Istanbul, Turkiye a few days ago, a local man came to them and offered to treat them and provide them with accommodation for free after discovering they were there for rescue missions.
"He was very friendly and hospitable," Bai said, adding that things like this had happened from time to time during their 5-day stay in Turkiye, which impressed him.
"Everywhere we went in Turkiye, we met warm Turkish people like the man in the airport, " Bai recalled.
Bai is one of the seven members from the Blue Sky Rescue branch in Baoding, Hebei province. The Blue Sky Rescue is China's largest nongovernmental humanitarian organization.
Among many other rescuers, the seven members went to Turkiye right after devastating earthquakes struck Turkiye and Syria on Feb 6.
On the morning of Friday, they came back to Baoding and were warmly welcomed by citizens in the city chanting "Bravo" with thunderous applause.
"I think this is an honor we all share for saving lives," Bai said.
According to Bai, the team participated in rescue missions at 10 destroyed buildings and another 133 sites, which saved three survivors from the earthquake and found another 43 people who had died.
After they completed their missions in Turkiye, other rescue teams from China, including rescuers from Hong Kong, had also left Turkiye and successively returned to their home in places across the country, including Tianjin and Shanghai, according to media reports.
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