radiothebook Chapter 234 Beginning
Chapter 234 Beginning
July 7, 2026, 10:00 AM.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held today for a plot of land in the Zhangjiang South area of Pudong, Shanghai, near Sunqiao, which was just leveled at the end of last year and acquired through land auction in March of this year.
This piece of land covers a total area of 2.1 square kilometers. Currently, it is only surrounded by a mud-brick wall, and inside the wall, there is only a five-story main building that has just been topped out. Behind the main building, from a distance, there is a low-lying green belt and three vacant lots that have not yet been started.
Outside the wall, a red ribbon-cutting platform was temporarily erected, with a sign on it bearing three characters.
Qifeng Academy.
The backdrop, which had been obscured by three words all afternoon, standing beneath the ribbon-cutting platform, was only put up this morning after the dust at the entrance had been swept away. The backdrop only had one line of text:
Qifeng Basic Algorithm Research Institute, Shanghai.
There weren't many people in the audience. It wasn't that the event wasn't grand enough; it was just that Wei Lan had only sent out seventy-two invitations today. Of those seventy-two, sixty were for the first batch of fifty chief algorithm researchers at Qifeng Institute, who flew in today from nine cities around the world. All of them had to complete their onboarding procedures by noon tomorrow. The remaining twelve were for Shanghai municipal leaders, representatives from Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, the Shanghai Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, ShanghaiTech University, and Wei Lan herself.
There were no reporters.
Wei Lan did not invite reporters to her ribbon-cutting ceremony from the very beginning.
Su Chen, wearing a light gray shirt, stood on the right side of the ribbon-cutting platform. Next to him was a 57-year-old leader from Shanghai who had rushed back to Shanghai from the special review meeting in Beijing yesterday morning. He was the only person invited from outside this morning.
He was holding a pair of scissors with a red ribbon in his hand.
He handed the scissors to Su Chen.
"You cut it," he said.
Su Chen took the scissors.
Behind him were Lin Wei, Xu Gong, and Tao Bingwen—Tao Bingwen had once again set off from the Aerospace Bridge area at 6 a.m. this morning, taking the high-speed train here. He said he was coming as "a future colleague from Qifeng Institute to discuss cooperative projects." Behind him were the dean of the School of Microelectronics at Fudan University, a vice dean of the School of Integrated Circuits at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a professor from ShanghaiTech University.
The three rows below are the first batch of fifty chief algorithm researchers at Qifeng Institute. Of these fifty, seventeen returned from overseas. The other thirty-three were transferred from Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, and the Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
They only received the list last night.
The list lists fifty names by name, without blurring them out, followed by the titles of their representative papers. This list appeared on the Vilan website at 8:00 AM this morning, and at 8:20 AM, without checking the homepage, a push notification was posted for the second name on the list.
On mobile phones, in portals, and in service centers, eight out of the fifty names on the list were recognized simultaneously by v2ex, Zhihu, WeChat public accounts, and Bilibili as people who were unlikely to be brought back from overseas in their lifetime. This list sparked a discussion within the industry that morning about "what price Qifeng Institute offered".
On the other side of the ribbon-cutting platform, the leader kept his speech to three minutes.
"Regarding today's event," he said, "I received verbal notification at nine o'clock last night. The higher-ups said that a leader from Shanghai needed to come and cut this tape this morning. From nine o'clock last night to ten o'clock this morning, there were thirteen hours in between."
He paused for a moment.
"In these thirteen hours," he said, "the name Qiming was mentioned a full fifty-eight times on television, in newspapers, and on Weibo, and fifty-eight billion people read articles with Qiming on their minds. The name Qifeng, however, hadn't been uttered yet. It wasn't until ten o'clock this morning that the name Qifeng was uttered for the first time."
He glanced at Su Chen.
"Why did you choose 10 a.m. today, and bring up these three words and this list together?"
Su Chen gently held the scissors in his right hand.
He didn't reply immediately.
He looked at the empty space next to the backdrop sign. The windows of the five-story main building behind the backdrop sign had not yet been installed, and sunlight shone through those holes onto the backdrop sign.
"Qiming is a name," he said. "Qifeng is three."
The leader is looking at him.
"Qiming refers to the six locations of Qiming Labs," Su Chen said. "Qiming is downstream, engineering, and industrialization. Qiming needs three things to expand: people, materials, and algorithms. For people, Qiming Labs will start recruiting in August at its six locations. For materials, the site selection for the Weilan Materials Calibration Center in Suzhou Industrial Park will begin at 3 pm this afternoon. As for algorithms, I haven't said where we'll put them yet."
He raised his hand and pointed to the background sign.
"At ten o'clock this morning," he said, "I put this piece into Qifeng Courtyard."
The leader nodded.
"What's the relationship between Qiming and Qifeng, upstream and downstream?" he asked.
"It's not about upstream and downstream," Su Chen said. "Qiming is on the table, Qifeng is under the table. Qiming takes eight years, Qifeng takes twenty. Qiming has to deliver products, Qifeng has to deliver papers. Qiming wants to expand beyond East Asia, Qifeng doesn't stay on this street, but Qifeng's papers have to be published in Nature, Science, and IEEE Transactions."
He paused for a moment.
"He Zhaoming said this afternoon that Qiming can't get through this," he said. "The reasons he gave are all the reasons that are on the table—patents, PDK, chains. These reasons are not acceptable on the table. But Professor He didn't mention another way behind the scenes."
"This other road," he said, "is Qifeng."
He continued speaking.
"Qifeng doesn't take the wrong path," he said. "Qifeng never walks a path. Qifeng only does one thing—starts over. The 1973 Berkeley SPICE edition wasn't the only starting point. Qifeng can start a new path in 2026. Starting from this point, and walking for twenty years, in 2046, the effort Qifeng has put in will allow the next generation to choose a new path after they've walked this street."
He turned around and looked at the fifty initial researchers behind him.
They were all looking at him.
"These fifty people," he said, "report for duty today. Starting tomorrow, they will not accept any engineering projects from Qiming, nor any product projects from Weilan. Qifeng Institute will not take on external projects, nor will it use Weilan's business codes for redirection. Qifeng Institute will only do one thing."
The leader was looking at him.
"Publish a paper," Su Chen said.
He lifted the scissors.
"This is not unimportant. Publishing papers is Qifeng Institute's only delivery. Any paper published by Qifeng Institute in the future will be open to any field. Qifeng Institute does not require its researchers to take on any product tasks from Vilan. All papers published by Qifeng Institute are open to any field. All papers published by Qifeng Institute are not subject to Vilan's later commercialization needs."
He paused for a moment.
"Qifeng Academy does not set KPIs."
Among the fifty people in the middle three rows, several lowered their heads. Some of them were brought back from Berkeley. Back in 2010, when they were sitting in the Berkeley Hodok conference room listening to the old professor talk about the invention of SPICE, the old professor said, "In the first three years after this thing came out, none of us in our institute received subsidies, had performance evaluations, or reported progress to companies. We just did it."
They thought the old professor was reminiscing about the fire he lit fifty-three years ago. Little did they know that at ten o'clock this morning, they were catching up with that fire again.
Su Chen handed the scissors to the leader.
The leader caught it.
The two of them simultaneously gripped the scissors at two different points and cut at the same time.
The moment the red ribbon was cut, the three characters "Qifeng" on the backdrop rose up.
The fifty researchers in the first batch applauded simultaneously.
The applause was silent. It was silent because there were only about sixty pairs of hands; sixty pairs of hands can't make a loud sound. This ribbon-cutting ceremony had invited guests, no orderly ceremonial team, and no official placards; it lasted less than eight minutes from start to finish.
After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the leader walked over to Su Chen.
He patted Su Chen on the shoulder.
"Xiao Su," he said, "keep up the good work. If you encounter any difficulties, just let me know."
Su Chen nodded.
"Thank you," he said.
The leader patted him on the shoulder and turned around. He had to rush to a meeting at noon today, and a secretary beside him had already opened the car door.
Before getting into the car, he glanced back at those three words.
He looked at it for three seconds.
He said, "Did you come up with these three characters yourself?"
Su Chen said, "Yes."
"Qiming means brightness," the leader said. "Qifeng means sharpness."
He paused for a moment.
"In the next twenty years," he said, "Ming will be seen, but Feng will not. But Ming is someone Feng has emerged from."
Su Chen looked at him.
The leader got into the car.
The car door closed. The car started moving, exited the land near Qifengyuan, turned onto Jinke Road, and headed north.
Su Chen turned around and looked at the land behind him.
The morning sun wasn't too strong. Sunlight fell on the unopened window in the main building, and through it, onto the gently undulating green belt behind it. After uttering the brackets, the fifty initial researchers weren't unsure where to go next. They were waiting for Wei Lan, a colleague temporarily transferred from Qiming this morning, to lead them into the main building.
Wei Lan's colleague walked up to Su Chen.
"At noon today," she said, "was it the show with Ho Chiu-ming? Did you watch it?"
"I listened to the audio once on the way," Su Chen said.
"His last sentence," his colleague said.
Su Chen nodded.
"That sentence He Zhaoming said," he said, "did Qiming take the wrong path in the first place?"
"Yes."
Su Chen looked at the three words on his back.
"His statement," he said, "was even answered at the entrance of Qifeng Academy at ten o'clock this morning."
His colleagues were looking at him.
"Qiming has walked out of this street, but Qiming is not limited to just one," Su Chen said. "In 2046, the street that has walked out of Qifeng Courtyard."
They both looked up at the three words.
At this moment, sunlight streamed through the background of the signboard at Qifeng Academy, illuminating the edges of the three characters from behind, through the window openings and the voids.