How a Dam in Iceland Floats Chinese Dreams

Bui

lding a 630-foot dam and 45 miles of tunnels in Iceland's sub-Artic highlands presents a few logistical challenges. There's the sun, or, more precisely in winter, the lack thereof. There's the wind, which blows so hard it can snap doors out of their frames. There's the heavy machinery and the weekly six tons of food that have to be shipped to the island and driven for hours along narrow roads to the empty expanse of the site. And then, of course, there's the rice.

"According to the Chinese, this is not cooked," says Gianni Porta, a manager for Impregilo, the contractor in charge of the job. He pokes a finger at his plate of rice and meat in the work camp's cafeteria. "According to the Pakistanis," Porta continues, "this is overcooked."

If it came to a vote this afternoon, the rice would stay in the pot a little longer — about 40% of the 1150 workers currently living at the Karahnjukar camp are Chinese. Though it has drawn on workers from dozens of countries since construction began in 2003, Chinese employees have done the heavy lifting on the massive project due to begin powering a hydroelectric plant this month. The largest industrial undertaking in the history of this nation of 300,000 was always going to need outside help. "You would never have found the manpower in Iceland in the quantity that was needed," says Porta. "You can't just pick people up from the market and put them in the tunnel."

That's where the Chinese come in: China's own construction boom has generated the expertise needed by small labor markets such as Iceland and coveted by global companies such as Impregilo. Most of Karahnjukar's Chinese contingent have previously worked on two Impregilo-built dams in China and on a tunnel job in Mongolia. "It's amazing we managed to see each other here in Iceland," says Tian Weili, who grew up in the central province of Henan." Maybe if we stayed in China, we never would have seen each other again."

Karahnjukar doesn't look much like a place for reunions. In winter, the camp's rectangular buildings hibernate under thick snow, and the joke goes that it's best to keep rocks in your pockets as a hedge against being blown away when stepping outside on a stormy day. Hongliang Liu, another longtime Impregilo employee, talks wistfully about the lush greenery and tropical climate of his native Yunnan province. Here, he says, "The winter is too long and the days are too dark."

Impregilo does what it can to ease the discomforts of working at Karahnjukar. In a smoky, sparsely decorated common room, a group of men on break watch cartoons on one of two Chinese satellite channels. Cheap calling cards to China are sold on site. During summer, waves of employees depart once a week on chartered flights to China, visiting family on their biannual vacation leave, and returning with cheap cigarettes, jasmine tea, herbal medicine and whisky. In the compact health clinic on the camp's potholed main drag, Russian physician Vladimir Stanovko says that some of the Chinese workers initially came down with the flu and bronchitis in the cold, but now, "people have adapted."

One of the main beneficiaries of the Karahnjukar project is Alcoa, the U.S. corporation that is taking advantage of the planned supply of low-cost hydroelectricity to base an aluminum smelter here. Local environmentalists have protested loudly, but most of the employees scrutinizing the rice in the cafeteria today, or standing atop the dam overlooking a frozen reservoir and the wintry emptiness of eastern Iceland, are here because each month they are paid the equivalent of up to two year's salary in China.

Tian Weili, whose 11-year-old daughter lives in China with her husband and grandmother, says she's grown used to being away from her family. In these four years, she says, some of her co-workers have already bought their own families a new house, or set up a business back home. For her, the impact of Karahnjukar is simple: "It's changing lives."