Xu Yingqiang and his teammates left for Istanbul on Wednesday, after completing their five-day rescue mission in Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of the deadly earthquakes that hit both Türkiye and Syria on February 6.

The city of Kahramanmaras is the hometown of their Turkish interpreter Irem who gave herself a Chinese name Zhou Shixi. She told Xu it was hard to see her hometown destroyed this way, and would like to thank Chinese rescuers for sparing no effort to support her country's relief efforts, giving hope to the locals.

Wearing the blue helmet and uniform of China's Blue Sky Rescue, Xu is one of the hundreds of Chinese rescuers who went to the earthquake-stricken country last week.

Xu said he decided to build a rescue team after witnessing how rescuers saved survivors after an earthquake hit Ya'an in southwest China's Sichuan Province in 2013. He established the first Blue Sky Rescue team in his hometown a year later, which now has over 200 team members.

"It is one of the many rescue teams of China's civil relief squad," said Xu. "All of our members are ready to lend a helping hand when necessary."

By February 14, China's civilian rescuers searched and rescued 23 survivors and 181 victims in Türkiye, according to the coordination base camp established to organize China's civil relief personnel for the earthquake response in Türkiye under the guidance of the Ministry of Emergency Management.

Xu normally works as an instructor of rescue skills at a vocational education center in the city of Handan in northern China's Hebei Province. As the team leader of the city's Blue Sky Rescue, the 42-year-old applied to join the relief mission immediately after he saw news about the severity of the earthquake in Türkiye.

"I thought I couldn't wait any longer. Time means life. I might help save more lives the earlier I got there," Xu told CGTN. "Rescue has no borders."

At that time, thousands of rescuers from all over China applied to support the international relief response. The first batches of Chinese rescuers arrived in Türkiye within 48 hours after the quakes.

Through rigorous qualification verification, Xu was chosen as the 11th batch of volunteers dispatched by China to Türkiye.

Xu arrived in Kahramanmaras on February 11, along were six other rescuers and their heavy tool boxes. They brought everything they could possibly need, including life detectors, drills, cutters, shears and protection gear.

"The city is basically in ruins. Only several buildings still stand, but with cracks all over them," Xu recalled. "It was cold at the beginning and it was about -2 degrees Celsius in the following days. When I drank bottled water, there was ice in it."

Quick, quick, quick

With life detectors at hand, Xu and his teammates were assigned tasks of detecting and locating buried people, a crucial phase in rescue. Sometimes after locating a person, they would hand the task over to local rescue teams to excavate so that they could search for life at another spot.

Excavation requires great care to avoid hurting the buried individual. Both heavy bulldozers and light demolition tools are needed to dig holes and channels, which is time-consuming.

"Life detection and excavation are often repeated several times to locate a buried survivor. The excavation could take as long as a day or two, or as short as two to three hours," said Xu.

"To work more efficiently, we took turns to take a break on site," Xu said. "We each get to rest for about three hours a day."

Xu's teammates come from different cities across China. From commander to recorder, they had a clear division of labor within the team.

"We could understand each other's next move with one signal," said Xu.

Three local interpreters followed them closely, for fear of failed communication which might affect rescue operations. One of the first words they learned in Turkish was "is anyone there" and they shouted as a group while detecting life. With interpreters' help, Xu's team worked side by side with rescue teams from other countries, discussing rescue plans and sharing rescue skills.

"None of the four people we pulled out survived," said Xu. "Fortunately, in the area we did life detection, three survivors were successfully rescued by local rescue teams and other international teams."

Hoping for a miracle

The 72 hours of golden rescue window had passed, and the chances of survival at the site of the collapse were very low. Still, they wouldn't give up any hope. During the rescue, Xu heard cheers in different languages when they saved survivors from the rubble, but few people were as lucky.

A girl in her twenties gave Xu's team a box of candy at a rescue site on Wednesday, thanking them for their rescue efforts. Xu saw tears run off her face the moment she turned away. He was saddened to learn that the girl's parents and a three-year-old brother were still missing under the rubble.

Xu also remembered a man who asked for help to search for his girlfriend whenever he met a rescuer.

"He, like many others, stayed beside the ruins hoping for a miracle. Hearing his cries when his girlfriend's body was found, all the people present could not help but shed tears," Xu sighed. "Rescuers really tried the best to be quicker, and quicker."

As of Wednesday, the death toll from the earthquakes has risen to at least 35,418, according to Türkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The country was grateful that 84 countries sent rescue teams and 61 countries provided humanitarian aid, during the over 3,100 aftershocks.

At present, the focus of the relief efforts has shifted from life rescue to recovery in Türkiye. Xu hopes locals there can rebuild their homes as soon as possible.

Video edited by Shi Chan