Boxed milk, coke and some other goods, all soaked and contaminated, were piled up for sale on Monday outside Zhou Longping's grocery store in Yujiang county, Yingtan, Jiangxi province.

Rescue workers drive a speedboat to a flooded village on Sunday in Nandan county of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. Rain-triggered floods and landslides have forced the evacuation of more than 1.7 million people in 10 southern provinces and regions, said the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. [Xinhua]

Though some passersby doubted whether the contaminated goods were safe, many still bought the items.

"Hopefully I can sell them off for about 2,000 yuan," Zhou said, adding that the milk alone was worth 40,000 yuan ($5,884).

"Altogether, I'd lost about 200,000 yuan overnight," said the distressed 52-year-old Zhou, who has been running his store for about a year.

Though floods have retreated after rampaging the county seat, the losses are unrecoverable for Zhou and several others like him.

In Yingtan, a major rail transportation hub, road and rail traffic was cut off on Sunday.

A power station in the city was flooded on Sunday morning and 14 others stopped functioning, leaving at least 400,000 residents without electricity, the provincial power company said.

As of Monday, the water level of all the 26 rivers in Jiangxi has gone above the warning line, while the water level of six rivers, such as Xinjiang river and Fuhe river, has hit a record high.