What they say

Liu Xiangmei, environmental accident investigator with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment

I started working at the ministry after obtaining my doctorate in 2002. People's awareness of environmental protection was not as strong then. My colleagues and I often had to investigate undercover. We have been used to driving thousands of kilometers to tackle emergencies relating to the Yellow, Huaihe and Songhua river basins, and dealing with factories on heavily polluted days. We kept working in the aftermath of earthquakes and mudslides. Half of my two-decade career was spent on the road, and I have witnessed how ecological civilization morphed from a theory into practice.