Staff Writer

Jane Spencer is 30 years old, but has seen more of the world than many people twice her age. Spencer works in the Hong Kong bureau of The Wall Street Journal.

The daughter of Dick and Alice Spencer of Portland, she is a 1994 graduate of the Waynflete School and a 1999 graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island.

She's already achieved the highest honor in her field, winning with a team of other reporters a Pulitzer Prize. And while she lives a world away, she has strong feelings about Maine.

She misses Amato's Italian sandwiches and sticky buns from Standard Baking, as well as the welcome-home smell of the salty ocean.

This interview was conducted with her via e-mail.

Q: First of all, congratulations about being on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team of journalists. Tell me about the project that won, and your role in the team effort.

A: Our series explored the theme of naked capitalism in China, looking at some of the social and environmental downsides of China's booming economic growth. The stories covered everything from China's rampant industrial pollution, to the struggles of migrant workers who are building China's gleaming new cities.

I co-wrote a story about a village in western China that was poisoned by an industrial accident at a lead smelting plant. For months last year, the factory pumped lead dust into the air, and dozens of kids in the village had permanent brain damage from the exposure.

Lead poisoning is a huge problem in China because environmental laws aren't systematically enforced. And as American manufacturing has been outsourced to Asia, a lot of the dirty industries that used to pollute the West are polluting that part of the world.

Q: Am I correct in my understanding that you live in Hong Kong? How long have you lived there, and what is it like?

A: I moved here in August. As you might imagine, it's an incredibly crowded, throbbing, energetic city. At first, the entire city seemed like a giant shopping mall to me -- there's a Gucci store on every corner. It took me a while to get under the surface.

My favorite part is the small islands right off the coast.

Q: How did you get into journalism?

A: The first thing I ever published was an essay I read on Maine Public Radio in high school. I worked with Charlotte Renner on it. But I got really into journalism in college, when I worked as a reporter for my college radio station.

After college it took me a while to get a steady journalism job. I had a bunch of short-term assignments, including a terrific internship at The Nation magazine in New York, but I did all sorts of other stuff to make money.

One night, I took a job working the coat check at a fancy book party in New York. The editor of Newsweek International was on the guest list. At the end of the night, he lost his coat check ticket. As I was helping him dig through the coat closet, I got up the nerve to introduce myself, and told him I really wanted to be a journalist. He gave me his card. The next morning, I sent him an e-mail with the subject "From the coat checker." He got me an interview that day. I wound up spending almost a year at Newsweek, reporting on the Sept. 11 attacks and the aftermath in New York City.

Q: What is your specialty, and how did you settle into it?

A: I write about environmental issues and technology in Asia. The environment beat is great because there's so much urgency to it right now. There's a massive middle class emerging in India and China, and suddenly everyone wants their own car, air conditioner and computer. But it's becoming really clear that the Western model of development -- pollute first, clean up later -- just won't work in Asia because the growth is happening so fast and the environmental problems are already so acute they're causing widespread health problems.

It can seem pretty dire sometimes, but there's also all kinds of really innovative stuff going on, as alternative energy...