I never realized the job would be so tough

The phrase "environmental inspection" is now heard increasingly often in China. I have never doubted that being an inspector is tiring work, but I never realized just how tough it could be.

The first thing I did on June 25, when I met the environmental inspection team that was checking for discolored, malodorous water in Yulin, Shaanxi province, was join a patrol of a river the local government claimed to have cleaned up.

Shortly after the patrol began I was sweating heavily and discovered that my notebook, which I had put in my pocket, was getting damp. None of the pages was wet through, but the notepad felt as though it had been left in a humid room for several days.

It took more than three hours to patrol the 3.5-kilometer-long river. I didn't realize my arms and neck had been burned by the sun until we arrived back at the hotel. When I looked at the inspectors, I saw serious cases of sunburn - one even had bright red spots on his nose and forehead.

Sunburn was always a topic at dinner. The inspectors compared their arms and legs to see who had the smallest area of sunburned skin and who had the biggest.

Later, when I joined the inspectors on a trip to collect water samples from a stream reported as black and smelly, I found that collecting the samples was even more tiring than patrolling the river.

The stream would not have been easy to find without tips from local residents, and it wasn't easy to get to, either. Initially the water came out of a small tunnel hidden in thick grass. Then, we had to make our way through long grass and saplings to discover its future course. The sandy soil made the going more difficult. At some places, the ground was not solid, making it easy to lose one's footing, and the sand constantly got into one's shoes.

It took the inspectors about an hour to take three samples - one from each of the upper, middle and lower reaches - over a distance of about 1 km. The only good thing was that the high grass and woodland provided some refuge from the harsh sun.

The temperature drops at night in Yulin, but the inspectors had no time to enjoy the cool evening air. Instead, they held meetings about the progress of the work and discussed what to do next. Most only managed to snatch a few hours sleep before starting again the following morning.