Encountering the Yangtze

The Yangtze is long, stretching across the land of China. Along with the Yellow River, it is known as the “Mother River.” Tens of thousands of species and hundreds of millions of living creatures make their home in its vast waters, together forming a waterway that has sustained China for thousands of years. The people of Xingwang Village have lived beside the Yangtze for generations, growing up along its banks. Lao Jiang is one of them. When he was young, he could still often see “river pigs,” but as the years went by, the finless porpoises known by that nickname gradually disappeared. This stirred a sense of alarm in Lao Jiang, who had spent his whole life fishing. After investigating and searching tirelessly, he suddenly realized that humans like himself were the reason the porpoise population had dwindled. To bring the Yangtze’s spirits back to life and protect its smiling angels, Lao Jiang resolutely followed in the footsteps of his son, Xiao Jiang, on the path of protecting the river’s natural ecology, devoting the rest of his life to the mighty waters where generations of his family had lived.