Tales of mother river

A new documentary highlights the efforts made by ordinary people to protect the Yangtze, Wang Ru reports.

When Wang Ding entered the Institute of Hydrobiology affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1982, he began his job of looking after a Chinese river dolphin named Qiqi. He watched over the rare mammal for two decades, and witnessed its death from old age in 2002.

The Yangtze dolphins were declared "functionally extinct" in 2007.