Fresh from a history-making expedition to the South Pole, Hong Kong adventurer Chung Kin-man is already planning his next great challenge. Chung, 52, who with 54-year-old Shenzhen entrepreneur Wang Shi became the first Chinese to climb the highest peaks on seven continents and visit both poles, returned to Hong Kong yesterday. He is already preparing for a mission to Greenland. 'I am not crazy,' he said of his seemingly never-ending expeditions to the remotest parts of the planet. 'To me, there is no mission impossible. You need to set goals in your life. I am no dreamer. I like to make dreams come true.' Chung and Wang reached the South Pole on December 28 after a 10-day trek in 30-knot winds, following their trip to the North Pole in April. 'It was extremely cold,' said Wang, who suffered frostbite to his nose and a finger. 'We walked on an ice plateau some 3,000 metres above sea level. Basically, you cannot tell where the snow ends and the sky begins. It is as though you are walking in an icebox.' Despite this they described the conditions as 'mild' for the region. As well as the North Pole, they had already conquered the seven peaks, including Mount Everest, Mount Aconcagua in South America, Mount McKinley in North America and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa when they set off on their latest trek. The all-Chinese South Pole team left Hong Kong on December 8, first heading to Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile. They were stuck there for eight days because of stormy weather before finally setting foot on Antarctica. With them were four mainland mountaineering experts, aged 25 to 41, two of whom had accompanied them to the North Pole. 'We were in the world's driest desert where the extreme cold could freeze even our breath. We kept walking and walking and took a rest for about five minutes for every hour's walk. That was not too demanding,' Chung recalled. 'The weirdest part was that we smelled like suntan lotion,' he added, saying they had to apply large amounts of lotion frequently to avoid skin damage by rays reflecting off the snow. 'It is a good way to get slimmer. I lost about 5kg and Shi almost 10kg on the trip.' Chung's 75-year-old father, Chung Fat, said of his son's feat: 'Many people like to go south for the winter, but Kin-man reached the bottom of the Earth.' At 54, Wang is the oldest person to have accomplished the so-called seven-plus-two challenge, first achieved by South Korean climber Heo Young-ho in 1995. Only five people had completed the feat since then, until Chung and Wang made it. Wang's love of high mountains stems from his days as a People's Liberation Army driver in the late 1960s, a job that took him to some of China's most remote regions. He later left the army to work on the railways and eventually arrived in Shenzhen in the 1980s, starting off as a porter. Taking advantage of a more open economy, he reinvented himself as a businessman. In 1984 he set up a property development company, now called China Vanke, which had a turnover of 7.67 billion yuan in 2004. The expedition aimed to raise funds for protection of the endangered white-headed leaf monkeys in Guangxi province .
