The ups and downs of Latin adventure

'End of the world'

For Lin Peifeng at TEQSA, the project has become part of his life.

"After a 30-hour flight, this is like the end of the world," Lin said.

Located near the southern tip of South America, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, which means "Great Island of the Land of Fire", has extreme weather conditions as its name suggests.

In winter, there are only a few hours of sunlight and the strong, cutting wind howls all day outside his window.

"I couldn't sleep for the first couple of months," Lin said, and there were other things that needed getting used to, such as unreliable Internet connection, weak mobile phone signal, and the inconvenience of strikes from time to time.

In June, a large-scale strike by fuel truck drivers erupted in Argentina and stations in the city ran out of gasoline.

During those days, all the people in the office had to share one of the four cars the company has.

This is the first time Lin has been outside China, so the weekly get-together over a Chinese hot pot for all Chinese employees is a treat for those not yet used to the local food.

"We cannot find tofu here, so whenever there's someone coming from Buenos Aires, we ask them to bring some dried tofu, which is easy to carry," Lin said.

Buenos Aires is a four-hour flight from Rio Grande.

As winter approaches, it became too cold to do whatever remained possible to do on the construction site, so the company sent the last handful of Chinese construction workers back home.

Lin will soon join them.

When the snow thaws, maybe things will be better and easier, and he will return to Argentina.

But for the moment, he just waits for his flight ticket, to take him back to the warmth of home.

zhousiyu@chinadaily.com.cn