Wang Jingzhong, a journalist for China's Xinhua News Agency, explains how a frightening case of pollution in his home town turned him into an environmentalist.

I was born 30 years ago in Lingbi, a small town in eastern China. There is a small lake in the centre of the town, and when I was young, my brother took me there to swim and catch fish to take home and show off to our parents.

The lake water was clear, and covered in water lilies. Every day, women brought clothes to wash on stone slabs in the lake, while boys brought buckets to fetch water for their homes.

Evening was the best. Everybody would sit by the lake chatting, singing and playing games. I remember that my great aunt, who was blind, would dangle her feet in the water and sing folk songs to us.

But everything changed after a plastics factory was built near the lake. We were told that the factory would bring great benefits to our poor, farming area. But our excitement turned to horror when we saw waste from the plant pouring into our lake.

The blue water started to turn black and a strange smell gradually filled the air. Soon the fish and water lilies had gone. Even the birds that used to hover over the lake disappeared. People hurried past the lake with their hands covering their noses.

After about a year, the lake had filled with a pitch-black muddy substance that seeped into a river that circled the town. Trees along the river died and the lush reed beds disappeared.

We used to say the river was like a beautiful jade belt round the town. But it had become a hideous black serpent tightening its coils. People could no longer take pride in the town, and young people started to look for jobs elsewhere.

The nightmare of my home town is not unique. After I went to university and travelled more, I found many parts of China were badly polluted because of our zeal to industrialize our country. When I taught English in a college in Nanjing City, I often had to ask my students to shut the windows to stop heavy smoke from a steel plant filling the classroom. Such things convinced me that industrialization had to take the environment into account or it would bring more disasters than benefits.

And now I am a journalist, I write stories that heighten the environmental awareness of both governments and the general public.

But things have changed in China in the last few years. Seeing the problems, the Government has started to protect the environment. And the best news of all is that the factory in my home town has shut down. The pollution has stopped and the lake and the river are clean again.

PHOTOS: WANG JINGZHONG