BEIJING: A brave Alibaba employee who saved four people from drowning in a Hangzhou lake has been rewarded with a lifetime supply of fish heads.

Liu Xinting (pix), 42, leapt into action after he saw a car carrying two men and two women plunge into Thousand Island Lake at around noon on Sunday.

Liu, a product manager for Alibaba Cloud, was travelling back to Hangzhou with colleagues and their family members in a convoy of cars after a lunch of fish heads - a local delicacy - in neighbouring Quzhou, he said on Tuesday.

To reward him for his bravery, Hangzhou Qiandao Lake Development Group, which operates several fish restaurants, announced on its WeChat account on Monday that it would provide Liu with free fish heads for life.

Liu said he was travelling in the opposite lane when he saw a blue pickup truck rear-end a red car while trying to change lanes, causing the car to lose control and plunge downhill about 10m into the lake.

He ran down the hill with the driver of the pickup truck and shouted to his colleagues to call the police.

The car was floating about 20m offshore with its windows open when Liu reached it, and it sank soon after he tugged the four people out.

"It was actually really dangerous because I jumped into the lake with my clothes and shoes on," he said. "But it was an emergency, it was too dangerous to leave them in the water."

The four were tourists from Shanghai who had come to visit Thousand Island Lake. Local traffic police told Hangzhou Daily that the tourists had all returned home well.

"I never thought my colleagues and I would experience something like that," Liu wrote on WeChat Moments.

"It was a relief to save the four visitors. I heard that the driver of the red car felt guilty, but it was not her fault. I hope they can get over the trauma." - The Straits Times/Asia News Network