FEATURE: Drifting to unlikely survival from sunken ship

When Zhang Hui touched a rock near shore on Tuesday morning, he thought he was hallucinating.

The 43-year-old man endured an unlikely drift to eventually emerge alive from a ship that capsized in the Yangtze River on Monday night that has left more than 400 missing.

Zhang, who works for a Shanghai-based travel agency, was one of more than 450 people aboard the cruise called Eastern Star that left the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing on Thursday and was expected to reach Chongqing on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River this weekend.

Many of the people on the cruise had gone to bed around 9:00 p.m. Monday, whereas Zhang was still going through the list of activities planned for his group of tourists the next day.

Outside of his office onboard the ship, rain began to pour and lightening streaked across the sky.

Gradually, the rain began to pound the right side of the ship, with water seeping inside the cabins.

"The water continued to seep through even when you shut the windows," Zhang said.

Twenty minutes later, passengers began taking their soaked quilts and TVs into the hall. Zhang was leaving his office on the right side of the boat to return to his bedroom on the left side. That's when he noticed the ship had began to tilt.

The ship shifted as much as 45 degrees, according to Zhang. Small bottles began to roll down the table. Zhang replaced them up, but they tipped and rolled again.

"Looks like we are in trouble," Zhang recalls telling his colleague. Then the cruise overturned.

Zhang and his colleague only had 30 seconds to grab a life jacket. They grabbed everything they could reach and kept their heads above water as the cruise sank.

Zhang, who does not know how to swim, drifted in the river, holding the life jacket to stay afloat. He had no time to wear it.

He remembered seeing around a dozen people in the water yelling for help.

Five minutes later, only three to four could be heard. Their voices waned half an hour later, Zhang recalled.

After that, Zhang was tossed around in big waves and heavy rain.

"The raindrops hitting my face felt like hailstones. I tried to hold my breath but water was forced into my mouth anyway," Zhang said.

He managed to tie the life jacket to his belt and keep moving, hoping to run into a boat or reach a dock.

He did see a boat coming his way. He shouted, but either because it was too dark or his voice drowned in the rainstorm, the boat left.

After missing his first chance of getting saved, Zhang struggled to keep awake in the cold water. "Just hang in there a little longer, I told myself."

As dawn approached, Zhang saw land. He then felt reeds in the water and dragged himself towards the shore. A distance of a dozen meters took him an hour and half to finish.

Zhang stumbled on toward the buildings and was eventually discovered and sent to a hospital.

"I'm still alive," Zhang blurted out when he got a chance to call his family. On the other end of the line, his wife and 15-year-old son broke down as they thought Zhang had little chance of survival.

Zhang repeatedly expressed "regret" when recounting his arduous journey toward land. "Life jackets are accessible in all of the cruise's cabins. If it had not happened so fast, a lot of people could've been saved," Zhang sobbed.

Wang Yangsheng, who works at the Yueyang Maritime Rescue Center, said throughout more than a decade working there, he heard of very few cases where a boat does not even have time to send out a distress call before going underwater.

The rescue center received an alarm call from the crew of another boat, who saw two people in the water at 10:10 p.m. The center immediately sent a patrol boat and picked them up at 11:51 p.m.

That's when the sinking of Eastern Star became known to the outside world.

So far 15 people have been rescued while thousands of rescuers are racing against the clock to pull more people out of the sunken cruise.

More families are anxiously waiting for the news of their loved ones onboard the Eastern Star.

Wang said the intermittent rainfall in the region could complicate ongoing rescue efforts while rescuers have to take extra caution when cutting through the ship's hull to save those trapped inside.

That does not take into account people that have drifted away. Many of the survivors were rescued more than 6 miles away from the site where the boat capsized. Rescuers also found a dead body.

But many pray for miracles.

On Tuesday noon, a 65-year-old woman was rescued after having been trapped in the sunken ship for more than 17 hours. Rescuers found she could still talk, though not clearly. A medical check showed she did not suffer severe injuries, despite her clothes being torn in several places. Endi