Polar veteran comes in from the cold

Long stays at both the Antarctic and Arctic give researcher from Taiyuan University of Technology a unique insight, Sun Ruisheng and Zhang Yu in Taiyuan, Shanxi reports.

This is a man who knows what it's like to literally be poles apart from the rest of humanity. Few could endure over 400 consecutive days in the Antarctic wilderness with little human contact. That Dou Yinke, 46, a professor at the College of Electrical and Power Engineering of Taiyuan University of Technology in North China's Shanxi province, relishes company, is invigorated by it, is hardly surprising.

He has visited both poles, the Antarctic and Arctic, but the tales of his experience are not that of loneliness and despair but of adventure and achievement.