His oxygen was down to four percent. He had been alone in the dark for five days, surviving on raw fish inside a hollow pocket of air deep inside an underwater cave system in Hunan province. When rescue divers finally passed close enough, Wang did the only thing he had left: he jumped from the ledge where he had been sheltering and waved a flashlight he had kept charged the entire time.

That was the moment that brought them back. And when they pulled him out, his first words to the rescue team were: "Do you have a cigarette?"

How He Disappeared

Wang, a diving enthusiast in his 40s from Furong Town in Xiangxi, Hunan province, entered the Youshui River for a dive with a friend on the night of July 19. The river runs several dozen metres deep, with the entrance to its cave system located around nine metres below the surface. The karst geology of the region creates a labyrinth of underwater chambers that divers rarely explore alone.

Five minutes into the dive, Wang was gone. His friend lost contact with him at around 3am. By morning, police had launched a full search operation and called in the Xiangxi Shuguang Rescue Team alongside special police divers from the city of Baise in the Guangxi autonomous region.

Five Days in an Air Pocket

Wang had found a hollow section of the cave that contained a trapped air pocket. That pocket of air kept him alive. He had no food source except the fish that moved through the cave in the dark, which he caught and ate raw. With no light cycle and no way to measure time, he lost all sense of how long he had been down there.

Rescue divers were in the water throughout his disappearance, systematically working deeper into the cave system. On one descent, they reached 130 metres and found nothing. It was on the ascent, near the 100-metre mark, that they finally located him.

What makes that moment more significant than it first appears: Wang had already seen them. Tian Yanglin, captain of the Xiangxi Shuguang Rescue Team, later told the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald that Wang had heard the divers pass beneath him during an earlier search. He knocked on the cave rocks to signal them. They did not respond. He watched them swim past, heading deeper into the cave, and could do nothing to stop them.

That was the moment the story almost ended differently. Wang had been close enough to signal, visible enough to notice, and still missed. He returned to his air pocket and waited.

The Four Percent Decision

A breakthrough came on July 24 when rescuers heard a knocking sound on the rocks and traced it toward Wang's location. But it was his own action that sealed the rescue. With his oxygen cylinder reduced to just four percent, Wang made a calculated risk. He abandoned the air pocket where he had survived, dropped into the water, and waved the flashlight he had carefully kept charged throughout his five days underground.

The divers saw it. They reached him. And Wang, a man who had spent five days in an underwater cave eating raw fish in total darkness while rescue teams searched below him, walked to the waiting ambulance without a stretcher.

What People Got Wrong About the Cigarette

The line that spread fastest after his rescue was the cigarette request. Most people read it as a punchline. But it points to something more precise about what Wang's five days actually looked like mentally.

Wang had not panicked. He had not collapsed. He had stayed calm enough to conserve his flashlight battery, calculate when to abandon the air pocket, and time his signal to a window where rescue divers were close enough to see it. The cigarette request was not a joke. It was the first thing a man asked for after five days of controlled survival, and it tells you more about his psychological state than any description of the ordeal could.

Online reactions after his rescue reflected the same read. One commenter wrote: "His mind did not collapse. What incredible willpower." Another said: "To survive five days and still be in good condition, he is not just lucky, he is superhuman."

Wang was discharged and confirmed to be in stable condition following his rescue.