"We have witnessed the improvement of the water quality of the river. The number of microorganisms has increased, and the porpoises are not injured by ships or trapped in fishing nets," he says.

Wang's story is told in a six-episode documentary titled The Yangtze River, which aired over Oct 2-4 on Dragon TV, and has scored 8.9 points of 10 on the popular review site Douban.

Made by Radio and Television Shanghai, with the help of 11 other provincial TV stations in the Yangtze River Economic Zone, the documentary plots the river from its source in Northwest China's Qinghai province to its end in Shanghai, and tells the stories of the ordinary people who live alongside it.

Liu Liting, general director of the documentary, says she learned about the river from the Story of the Yangtze River, another documentary from the 1980s, as a student at the Communication University of China in Beijing some 10 years ago.

"I felt very excited to receive the task of making a new documentary about the Yangtze, which is always considered to be the mother river in China. Discussions about this topic are endless, and after 30 years we have new understandings of the river, and its relationship with Chinese people," Liu says.

In the past, the push for economic development by people who lived by the river came at a heavy cost to the environment, which led to many problems for the waterway's ecosystem.