Beijing 'pollution is right in your face'

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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer

In the countdown to the Beijing Olympics, NBC News' Adrienne Mong spoke with a number of people who know Beijing intimately about how their city has changed and the challenges it faces going forward.

From pollution to the rapid pursuit of progress, below are a series of links where an environmentalist, a businessman, and a Fulbright scholar describe Beijing "In their own words."

Environmental activist

Lo Sze Ping is the Greenpeace Campaign Director in China. A Hong Kong native, he studied and lived in the U.S. for several years before moving to Beijing in 2001.

Lo describes his experience in the Chinese capital, where he says people are aware of environmental issues -- not in the abstract but in the concrete day-to-day sense. He also reminds us that "that China cannot be not part of the picture" when it comes to battling for a cleaner planet."

VIDEO: Greenpeace: 'The acute pollution in China is right in your face.' Coming home to change

Gong Li is a Beijing native who left his homeland in 1987 after graduating from Tsinghua University (known as China’s MIT) to pursue graduate studies in the U.K. and then a career in the information technology industry in the U.S.

In 2001, he finally returned to a radically changed Chinese capital and told NBC News Producer Adrienne Mong how it took him a couple of years to readjust to being home.

VIDEO: Coming home to Beijing Rapid transformation

Susan Brownell first came to China in 1985 to study at Beijing University, also known as Beida and described as China’s Harvard. A national level track athlete in the U.S., she joined the track team at Beida and began competing in national college competitions across China.

Brownell is now an anthropologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and is back in the Chinese capital on a Fulbright fellowship. She discussed China's transformation in sports and society.

VIDEO: China's transformation