HAIKOU, June 7 (Xinhua) -- When fisherman Zheng Shizhong spotted a naked, unresponsive man floating 10 km off the coast of Chengmai County in south China's island province of Hainan on Tuesday morning, he could barely believe the drifter was alive.

The man, Qin Jianping in his 40s, a wholesale businessman from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in south China, had fallen into the sea during a late-night walk seven days prior, with no mobile phone, no life jacket, and no supplies to sustain him.

A SLIP THAT TURNED INTO A NIGHTMARE

Qin was on holiday in Haikou, capital of Hainan, when the accident took place. At around 11 p.m. on May 27, he stepped on a discarded fruit peel while walking along a seaside dam in muggy, windy weather and slipped straight into the rolling waves.

"The sea is nothing like a swimming pool," recalled Qin. "I couldn't touch the bottom, and huge waves kept pushing me further out. Every time I struggled a meter toward the shore, the waves would yank me three or four meters back. There was no way I could swim back."

Qin, who knows how to swim, choked on large amounts of salt water and suffered multiple cuts from offshore coral reefs shortly after falling in.

As the rising tide carried him further out to sea and his strength ran out, he gave up fighting the current and let himself drift, holding out hope that he would be spotted by passing ships at dawn. But by the next morning, land was completely out of sight. Two vessels passed nearby that day, but the sea's vastness and strong winds meant his waves and shouts were in vain.

To lighten his load and conserve precious energy, he discarded all his personal belongings, including his shoes, trousers, wristwatch and ring, and kept himself afloat by repeatedly treading water and swinging arms.

"The sun scorched me during the day, but the water kept stealing my body heat. After two or three days adrift, the sea felt as cold as a fridge," Qin said. After more than 40 hours without food or sleep, he managed to climb onto a floating buoy and fell asleep on it, only to be knocked back into the sea by a huge wave mid-snooze, too weak to climb back up.

On May 30, he struggled to climb onto another iron navigation buoy, but the fixture had been scorched blazing hot by the glaring sun. After clinging to it for hours, he was forced to return to the sea and continue drifting.

During this period, when he could no longer bear the extreme thirst, he tried to drink seawater and then consume his own urine to stay alive, only to find the method failed to quench his thirst at all, and he suffered sharp pain when urinating.

At night, the deep ocean waters were extremely cold. He gritted his teeth against the discomfort and drank seawater repeatedly, trying to keep warm by urinating. "Urine is a stream of warm heat. I curled up into a ball and tried my best to preserve this tiny bit of heat to warm myself," he recalled.

On May 31, the fifth day of his drift, he reached an orange navigation buoy with a large foam base, but he was already too exhausted to climb onto it, and could only grip the outer wall of the buoy to keep afloat. He then found the gaps in the foam were full of nail-sized sea crabs. He caught dozens of the crabs with his bare hands and ate them raw, which became the only food source throughout his entire drifting experience.

THE LIFELINE THAT CAME IN THE NICK OF TIME

By the fifth day adrift, Qin was so physically drained that even though he could hear the distant sounds of ferries and trains from shore, he could not paddle close enough to be found. He began suffering from severe hallucinations from lack of food and water.

"I dreamed there was a wedding in my hometown, and I was helping to cook, but I couldn't sit in a chair, and my feet couldn't touch the ground. I could barely breathe, but there was only one thought in my head: I can't die," he said.

On the sixth day, Qin's willpower was on the verge of collapse. His eyes were bloodshot from sun exposure and dehydration, and he even cried tears of blood when he wiped his face. Memories of his childhood farming, going to school, getting married and raising his children flashed through his mind as he felt death approaching.

It was then that Zheng Shizhong and his fellow fisherman Fu Tingsan spotted him.

"My heart skipped a beat when I saw him," Zheng recalled. "But the strong current swept him a hundred meters away in the blink of an eye."

When they steered the boat closer, they saw Qin was naked, floating on his back, eyes closed and barely responsive. They tried to throw him a rope first, but Qin's eyesight was almost gone and he could not see it.

They then extended a 4-meter-long boat pole and tapped him on the back. Delirious, Qin mistook the pole for a door handle in a restaurant and grabbed it tight, letting the two fishermen pull him aboard.

"I think I'm going to die," the weak Qin mumbled as soon as he was pulled onto the boat.

"You're with us now. You're not going to die," Zheng replied immediately.

The fishermen gave him small sips of water instead of letting him drink as much as he wanted to avoid damaging his internal organs, washed his cuts with fresh water, gave him clothes to wear and rubbed his stiff, seawater-soaked legs.

It took an hour and 25 minutes for the boat to return to shore, where villagers were already waiting, ready to help call the police and ambulance and spread his information on social media to find his family.

A NEW LEASE ON LIFE

Qin's family and friends had been searching for him frantically. His friend traveled from Guangxi to Hainan to report him missing on May 29, two days after the accident, and police confirmed he had fallen into the sea via coastal surveillance footage.

His wife arrived in Hainan on May 31, searching the shoreline for days. Police told the family that the chance of survival after more than three days adrift at sea was extremely low, and large-scale search efforts were unlikely to find him alive.

"I had already accepted that my husband was gone. I filled three bottles of seawater to bring back to Guangxi as his memento for burial," his wife said. She was packing to return home when she got the news that Qin had been found alive. When she saw him in the hospital, covered in scars and almost unrecognizable, she burst into tears, overwhelmed by both relief and sorrow.

Qin was admitted to Chengmai County People's Hospital in a critical condition: he suffered from severe hypertonic dehydration, multiple infected cuts from reefs and marine life stings, oral ulcers from eating raw crabs, and internal damage from drinking seawater and urine. He lost more than 10 kilograms during his ordeal, dropping from over 85 kg to 75 kg.

After two days of emergency treatment in the ICU, his vital signs stabilized. Doctors said he is expected to be discharged in about a week, with only regular follow-up checks needed afterwards.

Qin said the first thing he will do after recovering is visit the two fishermen who saved him, to thank them face to face, before returning to his hometown to rest.

"No matter how dangerous or hopeless things get, if you keep a steady mind, you can get through it," the survivor said.