Chapter 478: Breaking Point: The Hard Turn from

On a deep night in October 1995, the alarm in Workshop No. 3 of Longgang Gongye Yuan tore the silence apart like a steel saw.

Zhang Wei rushed out of the lab in a panic, and saw the workshop flooded with light; the lithography machine imported from Germany was spewing acrid white smoke.

Several engineers scrambled to cut the power, and a young fellow standing by the equipment had a face as pale as paper.

"Chief Zhang… the UV lamp tube burned out," the technical supervisor Lao Wang said, his voice trembling, "Spare tubes… only one left."

Zhang Wei's heart sank to the bottom of a valley.

This second‑hand lithography machine, worth three million dollars, was the lifeline of their chip laboratory. It was used to debug their self‑developed process, to train young engineers, and to… prove that China could also make chips.

Now, this specially made UV lamp tube from Germany is taking its life.

"Can it be repaired?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

Lao Wang shook his head: "The lamp tube is a custom part; we can't make it domestically. In Germany the quote… two hundred thousand dollars per tube, and delivery takes six months."

Six months.

Zhang Wei's vision went black. Without the lithography machine, the chip lab was just a collection of expensive decorations.

Those young people he had personally recruited from Tsinghua and Peking University, those circuit diagrams designed through countless sleepless nights, those process technologies that were just beginning to show promise—all had to stop.

He turned and hammered a hard punch into the wall.

His knuckles ached, but it was nothing compared to a ten‑thousandth of the pain in his heart.

When the news reached Li Ping'an's ears, it was three a. m.

The telephone rang with a bang at the bedside; Lin Xueqing woke first, nudging her husband. Li Ping'an opened his eyes; a sixty‑four‑year‑old man whose gaze was as clear as a freshly awakened eagle. He answered, listened for thirty seconds, then said, "I'll be there right away."

The black Crown sedan sped through the night.

Shen Nan Avenue was as empty as a nightmare, the streetlights stretching and shrinking the car's shadow in a looping pattern.

Li Ping'an sat in the back seat, hands crossed on his knees, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the old callus on his thenar— a remnant of his youthful martial training, the iron‑sand palm of Ba Ji Quan, which he hadn't let go for over fifty years.

Driver Xiao Wang stole a glance at his boss through the rearview mirror. The elder who usually showed no emotion now furrowed his brows, his jawline taut like a blade.

When the car arrived at the industrial park, the sky was just turning a pale fish‑belly white.

A circle of people had already gathered at the entrance of Workshop No. 3. Zhang Wei stood at the front, hair a mess like a chicken coop, glasses crooked on his nose, his white coat stained with unknown smudges. Seeing Li Ping'an get out, he opened his mouth but made no sound.

"Come in and speak," Li Ping'an patted his shoulder.

The workshop was filled with the smell of burnt charring and despair.

The lithography machine lay like a dead giant, quietly resting behind the glass wall of the ultra‑clean room. All the German indicator lights on the control panel were off, only the emergency exit's green glow lingered, like phosphorescence in a cemetery.

Li Ping'an stared through the glass for a long time.

Then he turned and asked Zhang Wei, "If we make this kind of lamp tube ourselves, how long would it take?"

"We can't make it," Zhang Wei shook his head, "The purity requirements of quartz glass, the electrode material formula, the vacuum sealing process… all are German‑kept secrets. We can't even perform material analysis."

"Then analyze it," Li Ping'an said, his voice eerily calm, "Disassemble the broken tube piece by piece and analyze. If purity is insufficient, go to Changchun Optical Machinery Institute. If the formula is unknown, go to Chinese Academy of Sciences Materials Institute. If the packaging process is unknown, go to Shenyang to find an old technician at the vacuum equipment factory."

He paused, "One month, I want to see a plan."

"Boss…" Zhang Wei's voice trembled, "This… this is almost impossible."

"In 1942, when my parents starved to death, I also thought surviving was impossible," Li Ping'an said, looking into his eyes, "But I chose to live, I had to find my sister, I had to get to Beijing. In the end, I did all that; everything is possible."

He pointed at the dead machine.

"This lamp tube is our 1942 now. If we get past it, the sky's the limit. If we can't…"

He didn't finish, but everyone understood.

If we can't get past it, the chip dream will truly remain just a dream.

9 a. m., emergency meeting.

The conference room was shrouded in smoke; seven or eight heads of department inhaled clouds, trying to numb anxiety with nicotine.

Li Ping'an made an exception and didn't stop them—he knew that these veterans who had fought alongside him for a dozen or twenty years each carried a stone in their hearts now.

"Everyone knows the situation," Li Ping'an said bluntly, "The lithography machine is down, the chip lab is halted. But that's just the tip of the iceberg—our CNC machine tools have core controllers from German Siemens; a repair takes three months. The automotive production line's welding robots are from Japan's FANUC; software upgrades require a Japanese engineer to bring a dongle."

He looked around at everyone.

"We used to say first solve the existence problem, then the quality problem. Now what? We have it, but the lifeline is in someone else's hands. If they're in a good mood, they let you use it. If they're in a bad mood, a single lamp tube can choke you to death."

He Xiao was the first to speak: "Boss, on the automotive side… FANUC has already issued a notice that next year's software upgrade fee will rise fifty percent. Their reason is 'increased R&D investment.'"

"Increase," Li Ping'an said, "We will pay every cent owed. But today's meeting isn't about bargaining; it's about—"

He wrote two big characters on the whiteboard: Breakthrough.

"How to break it?" Xu Jiaming pushed his glasses, "The technology gap can't be closed in a day or two. Our engineers haven't even fully grasped the principle of the lithography machine yet…"

"Then master it," Li Ping'an interrupted, "From today onward, all imported equipment in Wanshang will be completely 'opened up.' If it can be disassembled, disassemble; if it can be measured, measure; if it can be copied, copy. Don't fear breaking it—if it breaks, it forces us to repair and build it ourselves."

The conference room erupted in a clamor.

"Boss, these are all multi‑million‑dollar pieces of equipment!"

"What if we break them?"

"Out‑of‑warranty repair costs are sky‑high!"

Li Ping'an waited for the chatter to subside, then spoke slowly, "I know the risk. But have you considered—if one day they stop selling us equipment, stop providing maintenance, stop exporting spare parts. Would our workshops, production lines, laboratories become a pile of scrap metal?"

No one answered.

Because the answer was clear to everyone.

After the meeting adjourned, Li Ping'an kept Zhang Wei and Li Yaozong behind.

Father and son sat face‑to‑face, a wide mahogany desk between them. Li Ping'an looked at his son—thirty‑two, Tsinghua graduate, eight years rotating through the group, officially appointed general manager last year. His shoulders were still a bit slender, but the sharpness in his eyes already echoed his younger self.

"Yaozong, what do you think?" he asked.

Li Yaozong pondered briefly, "Dad, I agree with the direction of equipment disassembly learning. But we can't be reckless. My suggestion: establish a 'Reverse Engineering Research Institute' and work systematically. Before disassembling each piece of equipment, first perform a 3‑D scan to build a digital model. Record the entire disassembly process on video, and assign numbers, measurements, and analyses to each component."

He opened his laptop and pulled up a proposal.

"I've already tasked the Strategic Research Institute with a preliminary plan. It proceeds in three steps: first, digest and absorb, fully master the existing imported equipment; second, improve and innovate, optimize based on that understanding; third, forward design, create our own equipment."

Li Ping'an examined the proposal carefully.

It's very detailed, very systematic, but also… very costly. The preliminary budget is two hundred million, and that's just for the first year.

"Where does the money come from?" he asked.

"Cut three real‑estate projects that are under construction," Li Yaozong said bluntly. "Those projects have high gross margins, but they have no strategic value for the group's long‑term development. Better to concentrate resources on core technology breakthroughs."

Zhang Wei listened nearby, his heart pounding.

Real estate is the most profitable business right now; can you just cut it like that?

Li Ping'an smiled, "Bold move. How will you explain it to the shareholders?"

"No explanation needed." Li Yaozong lifted his head. "I am the general manager, responsible for the group's long‑term development. If we only chase short‑term profit, Wanshang won't reach today, nor tomorrow."

Those words rang out with authority.

Zhang Wei suddenly felt that the young man before him possessed the same spirit of "press on even if a hundred thousand oppose me" that his father had shown when deciding to make DVDs and pagers.

The decision was implemented quickly.

The first "open‑body dissection" was the burnt photolithography machine.

The Reverse Engineering Institute brought in top equipment: an industrial CT scanner, a laser 3‑D measuring instrument, and a high‑precision electron microscope. Twenty engineers were split into four teams, working 24‑hour shifts, carefully dismantling the discarded ultraviolet lamp tube as a surgeon would dissect a corpse.

Fragments of quartz glass were sent to Changchun for compositional analysis.

Electrode material was sent to the Chinese Academy of Sciences for energy‑spectrum testing.

The vacuum‑sealed structure was scanned layer by layer with CT.

Every day, the lab rang with cries of surprise or frustration.

"Purity analysis is in! Silicon dioxide content is 99.99%, but the alumina doping ratio is off…"

"The electrode material is a tungsten‑rhenium alloy, roughly a 7:3 ratio…"

"The vacuum requirement is 10⁻⁶ pascals; the best domestic equipment can only reach 10⁻⁵…"

Problems emerged one by one, difficulties piled up like mountains.

Yet no one said to give up.

Because Li Ping'an came to the lab every day, saying nothing, just standing by the observation window for a while. Sometimes he brought tea, sometimes snacks, sometimes came empty‑handed. Yet his very presence was a silent spur and support.

On the seventh day, Li Ping'an brought an elderly man.

He was in his seventies, thin and gaunt, wearing a faded Zhongshan suit, walking with a slight limp. Zhang Wei at first paid no mind, until the elder approached the electron microscope, glanced at the material structure diagram on the screen, and blurted, "This is German Zeiss craftsmanship, patented in 1958; I read about it in the Journal of Optics."

Everyone was stunned.

The elder turned, introduced himself: "My name is Wu Shouren, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Optics and Mechanics. I've been retired for ten years, growing flowers and keeping birds, never thought my old bones would still be useful."

Li Ping'an laughed, "Old Wu is someone I asked a contact to bring from Shanghai. He studied in Germany in the 1950s and took part in developing the country's first electron microscope."

Wu Shouren waved his hand, "Old matters, let's not discuss. This lamp tube… you want to make it yourselves?"

"We do," Zhang Wei nodded heavily.

"Then start by drafting the drawings," Wu Shouren sat at the workbench, put on his reading glasses, "I'll dictate, you record. Quartz glass melting requires careful temperature curves; electrode welding must be done under argon protection; the key to vacuum sealing is…"

The elder's voice echoed through the lab.

Those thirty‑year‑old, dust‑covered pieces of knowledge, those experiences thought never usable again, were revived on this autumn afternoon.

A month later, the first self‑made ultraviolet lamp tube was born.

Rough, ugly, like a shoddy counterfeit. Performance tests were disheartening: brightness only sixty percent of the German original, estimated lifespan under a thousand hours, and a slight leak.

Yet Zhang Wei held the tube, his hand trembling.

"Install it and try," Li Ping'an said.

The tube was carefully reinstalled into the photolithography machine. Power on, warm up, start… the machine emitted a familiar hum, ultraviolet light passing through the optical system, projecting fine patterns onto the silicon wafer.

Though the lines weren't sharp enough, though uniformity still had issues, though brightness had to be monitored hourly…

Yet it lit up.

The Chinese‑made lamp tube got the German machine running again.

That evening, Li Ping'an set up five tables in the industrial park cafeteria.

No exotic delicacies, just a simple four‑dish soup. He raised his glass, toasting Old Wu, Zhang Wei, and every engineer involved in the breakthrough.

"Today's lamp tube is only sixty percent of the imported brightness, its lifespan maybe a third," his voice echoed in the cafeteria, "but it's ours—from material to process, every step we figured out ourselves."

He paused.

"I'm sixty‑four, have seen too much. I know that moving from sixty percent to a hundred may take five years, ten years, maybe longer."

He lifted his glass.

"Toast to every person groping for light in the darkness."

Everyone raised their glasses.

The clink of glass was crisp and pleasant, like the heartbeat of a people unwilling to fall behind.

The success of the lamp tube breakthrough was like a dose of stimulant injected into Wanshang's body.

The Reverse Engineering Institute expanded fully. CNC machine tools were dismantled, welding robots dissected, and even the most ordinary servo motors on the production line were taken apart to analyze structure, map parts, and test performance.

Every day brought new discoveries, new problems, new breakthroughs.

Yet each day also brought new setbacks.

In early November, Japan's FANUC formally sent a letter: due to "technical protection reasons," from next January it will cease exporting the latest generation welding‑robot control software to China. Sold equipment may continue using the older software, but "compatibility with new production lines is not guaranteed."

He Xiao held the letter, his hand trembling.

The newly expanded automotive division production line had its equipment in place, awaiting installation and commissioning. If the control software is blocked, the whole line would become a pile of scrap metal.

"This is retaliation," He Xiao gritted his teeth, "retaliation for us dismantling their equipment, retaliation for us trying to build our own robots."

Li Ping'an took the letter, glanced at it, then gently placed it on the table.

"Then we make it ourselves."

He said, "Take all the data we got from disassembling the FANUC robot. From now on the software team will work three shifts; I want to see our own control software by January next year, even if it's only a basic version."

"But the time…"

"There's no 'but.'" Li Ping'an interrupted him. "In 1942 I walked from Henan to Beijing on an empty stomach, crawling when I could no longer walk. Now we have food, a lab, engineers, so what reason do we have to say 'but'?"

He Xiao took a deep breath and nodded heavily.

When he left the office, his back was perfectly straight.

The real turning point occurred in December.

That day, old Wu Shouren fainted in the lab.

He was taken to Yi Yuan for examination; it was a cerebral infarction. Fortunately the rescue was timely, no life danger, but his left side was paralyzed and his speech was halting. When Li Ping'an arrived at the hospital, the old man was lying on the bed, using his still functional right hand to trace something in the air.

The nurse explained, "He's been like this, as if he's drawing."

Li Ping'an leaned in and examined the old man's finger trajectory. It was a complex curve, undulating, fluctuating, like… a temperature curve?

He suddenly understood.

"Old Wu, is that the temperature curve for melting quartz glass?"

The old man's eyes brightened, and he nodded with difficulty.

Li Ping'an grasped his hand: "Don't worry, what you taught us we have recorded. Not only in the notebook, but on the schematics, and in our hearts. Our lamp tubes, the second generation is already in trial production, brightness can reach seventy percent."

A tear slid down the old man's eye corner.

It was cloudy, scalding.

Returning from the hospital, Li Ping'an sat in his study all night.

At four A. M., he dialed Li Yaozong's Telephone.

"Yaozong, I've made up my mind. Starting next year, Wanxiang's strategic focus will shift entirely to core technology R&D. All real‑estate projects will be cut, the mature businesses of home appliances and clothing will stay as they are, and profits will be used as transfusion."

There was silence on the other end for a few seconds.

"Dad, are you sure? This means giving up tens of billions of profit each year…"

"Sure." Li Ping'an said, "Money can be earned again, but time lost is truly gone. Now Japan and the United States are accelerating tech upgrades; if we keep making quick money, when we finally wake up we may not even qualify to catch up."

He looked out the window.

Dawn was breaking; Shenzhen was waking in the sunrise. This city, this country, stands at a crossroads. To the left is continuing as the world's factory, earning hard money. To the right is climbing upward, becoming creators, becoming leaders.

The road is hard, but it must be taken.

"Also," he added, "from Wanxiang's foundation fund, allocate a sum to establish the 'Wu Shouren Scholarship.' It will specifically reward young people with potential in precision instruments and optical Engineering fields. Let future generations know that someone once walked this road, someone is still walking, and someone will keep walking."

January 1, 1996, Wanxiang Group annual strategic release conference.

Li Ping'an went on stage himself. The sixty‑five‑year‑old elder had gray hair but a straight back, and his voice was booming.

"Today, I want to share a story with everyone." He turned on the projector; the screen showed a photo of a self‑made ultraviolet lamp tube. "This lamp tube's brightness is only sixty percent of imported products, its lifespan only one‑third. Yet to us it is worth over six million dollars—because it is our own child, something we built from zero, piece by piece."

The audience was silent.

"In the past fifteen years, Wanxiang grew from a small workshop to a group with annual revenue of tens of billions. We've made vans, pagers, DVDs, home appliances. We're proud because we created jobs, created tax revenue, created the confidence of 'Made in China.'"

He shifted his tone.

"But today I must say, that's still not enough. Because what truly chokes our neck is not the whole vehicle, not the whole machine, but the chips inside, the control systems inside, the core components inside."

He switched the slide, showing a world map marked with each country's technological strengths: America's chips, Germany's machine tools, Japan's optics, Switzerland's precision…

"These places are the peaks we must climb. The road is long, hard, maybe ten years before we see returns. Yet we must keep climbing, because—"

He paused, his gaze sweeping the room.

"Because we don't want in the next century to still have to eat under someone else's shadow. Because we want our descendants to stand tall and say: this was made by us Chinese, from the inside out, every part."

Thunderous applause.

It continued unabated.

After the conference ended, Li Ping'an returned to his office.

On the desk lay a brocade box, a New Year gift from Li Yaozong. Inside was a brand‑new ultraviolet lamp tube—second‑generation product, brightness reaching seventy‑five percent of imports, lifespan estimated at two thousand hours.

The box also contained a card, written in his son's hand:

"Dad, the road is still long, but we are walking. One step, one footprint, we will eventually get there."

Li Ping'an picked up the lamp tube and looked at the light. The quartz glass emitted a faint violet halo, the electrode welds were round and full, still with a few tiny bubbles, but far stronger than the first generation.

He recalled Old Wu tracing his fingers on the hospital bed.

He recalled Zhang Wei trembling while holding the first‑generation lamp tube.

He recalled the young people in the lab with blood‑red eyes.

This road is indeed still very long.

But at least, they have set out.

And, never look back.

Outside, Shenzhen's lights were just coming on. The first night of 1996, the city still grew rapidly, still chasing dreams.

And in some corner of this land, a group of people were doing something that seemed impossible—turning the phrase "Made in China" from assembly into creation.

From following to leading.

From admiring to climbing.

This road is hard, treacherous, lonely.

But they know, as long as they keep going, light is ahead.