Water wise

"I would say that from being a teenager I had this interest in Chinese culture and under this very enlightened scheme Nature had, I thought this is my chance to finally go," he says.

"Looking back it was an interesting time to be there (the year of Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour) but it was still tough to travel in China."

Ball now has a deeper commitment to China: He and his wife adopted a Chinese baby in 2006. Mei Lan is now 11 and the elder of their two daughters. The book is, in fact, dedicated to her.

"Over the past 10 years I have pretty much gone to China every year with my family. We are keen she has contact with her Chinese roots," he says.

Ball left Nature in 2001 (although he still contributes to it) to focus on writing books, of which he has published around 20.

Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another in 2004 won the Aventis prize for science books. The Music Instinct in 2011, about why music matters to people, prompted a huge debate.

"I have always done music in one way or another. I played in bands in Bristol and I wanted to find a way of writing about music drawing on my scientific background, too."

His new book deals with issues that are a matter of life or death in China to this day. Only in 2007, the Yellow River, whose origin is the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau dried up before it could reach the sea for 10 months.

"It had happened in the historical past, but this was a real warning and a real shock. It was to do with overuse of river water, too much being taken out for industrial use, agriculture and irrigation. Over the past 10 years management of the river seems to be getting better," he says.

Ball says China's water challenge has created a mentality among the Chinese that almost any problem the country has can be solved by engineers. Until recently many of the country's leaders, including former leaders Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao, have been engineers.

"I think that is part of the reason why China has had this appetite for huge engineering projects. There is a view in the West that they should perhaps be more like China and that there be more scientists and engineers in positions of power," he says.

Contact the writer at andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn