Chapter 495: Arrival of the Visiting Team

A bright silver airplane left a white trail across the blue sky.

The thirty people visiting group headed toward the Max Planck Institute, carrying the future of Chinese controllable nuclear fusion on their shoulders. According to the cooperation agreement between the two parties, they will receive simple training for the transfer of the WEGA Stellarator.

In their original plan, Lu Zhou was going to travel with them.

However, he didn’t end up on their flight. Instead, he arranged his flight to be three days later.

This was because, on the day the Chinese experts departed, the experts from the Max Planck Institute arrived at Jinling International Airport.

The German engineer had a wrinkly face; his hat almost touched his tall nose bridge. He carried his suitcase and got off the airstair.

He squinted as he looked at the airport terminal building. He then said to his colleague, “This place has changed a lot.”

The red-haired, slightly younger-looking engineer raised his eyebrows.

“You’ve been here before?”

“That was from ten years ago,” the old-fashioned engineer said as he opened his wallet and rubbed the photo inside. He then casually added, “If you live in Berlin, you won’t see any obvious changes over a 10 year period. However, you can see the differences every year here.”

“Berlin, right? There are actually some changes.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Ever since Angela Merkel opened the gates for the immigrants, we’re seeing new things on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper every day.”

When the old engineer heard the young engineer’s joke, he laughed while shaking his head.

“Keep these things private, don’t let other people hear them.”

“I know, I know.” The young engineer looked at the people picking them up and paused for a second. He then narrowed his eyes and said, “… A few thousand nanometers wide wire, do you really think they can do it?”

It wasn’t that he looked down upon China’s ability in science and technology innovations. After all, Europe had been weak ever since the latter half of the 20th century; they didn’t have the right to look down on anyone.

However, technology innovation was one thing, being able to take the technology out of the laboratory was another.

In fact, ever since 2014, people had been able to achieve in laboratories a couple of dozen nanometer width graphene nanoribbons. Up until now, there had even been laboratories that had been able to create a wire seven atoms wide. However, this technology had remained in the laboratory so far.

This was the biggest gap between academia and the industry.

Half a century ago, if some scientist found a new compound or a simple synthetic method for an important industrial material, they might become rich overnight. However, these things rarely happened anymore.

More often than not, the academic community would produce a beautiful result but the industry would take ten or even decades to digest the technology. The industry might even eventually prove that it was useless.

Due to Lu Zhou’s success on lithium anode materials, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres noticed the potential in carbon-based superconducting materials ever since the SG-1 material was created. However, when they did an industry analysis on the material, due to costs, production, and various other difficulties, they decided to give up on this material.

However, someone had suddenly completed the task that they had previously thought was impossible. They were astonished when they heard the news.

After all, China wasn’t particularly good at nanotechnology…

“Looking at the samples they sent, they actually did it.”

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“Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, unbelievable.” The old engineer paused for a second before he said, “But isn’t that why we’re here, to figure this thing out?”

At the airport VIP entrance that was on the other side of the airport.

Yang Xu stood next to Lu Zhou and looked at the airplane not far away. Suddenly, he asked, “Actually, I always wanted to ask, why are the people from the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres here?”

Lu Zhou: “It’s normal. You can’t expect a group of plasma physicists to also be good at materials science, right?”

Yang Xu replied with a joke, “Isn’t there someone like that standing right here? Good at mathematics as well.”

Lu Zhou paused for a second before he realized that Yang Xu was talking about himself. He smiled and shook his head.

“It’s totally different.”

While they were talking, the German visiting group already stepped off the airstair.

Lu Zhou began to walk toward the airstair.

The old engineer walked in front of the team. He took off his black hat and extended his callus-filled hand.

“Hello, Professor Lu, I am Rand Ulic from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for Materials and Energy. This is my colleague, Simson Eugene.”

“Hi, I’m Lu Zhou.” Lu Zhou shook hands with this Geman engineer as he looked at him with surprise. With a smile, he asked, “You speak Chinese?”

“I worked at Jinling for two years. I’m not very good at it, but I know a little,” the serious old man smirked and said in a funny tone.

“Really? It sounds good to me,” Lu Zhou said. He then gave a friendly smiled as he introduced the three people standing next to him. “This is the director of the Institute of Materials Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Yang Xu. These two are the general manager of Baosheng Group, Sun Chengwu, and chief engineer, Mr. Cao Ganwei.”

“On behalf of Baosheng Group, I would like to welcome you all.” Sun Chengwu shook Ulic’s hand and said with a smile, “Our company has prepared a hotel for you. Are you going to leave your luggage at the hotel or do you have other plans?”

Ulic: “We can go to the hotel later, can you guys take us to the factory first?”

Sun Chengwu paused for a second. Obviously, he didn’t expect the Germans to be in such a rush. He then glanced at Lu Zhou.

When General Manager Sun saw Lu Zhou nodded, he looked at Professor Ulic and said with a smile, “Of course, no problem at all.”

The German visiting group wasn’t large; there were only six people there. However, most of them were top carbon nanomaterials experts at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for Materials and Energy.

After the group boarded their cars, General Manager Sun sat next to Lu Zhou and couldn’t help but ask, “Why are these German folks in such a rush?”

When Lu Zhou heard General Manager Sun’s question, he smiled.

“For example, when you were in school, when your friend who usually got seventy or eighty in a test, suddenly scored 120 in the latest test, what would you think?”

Yang Xu thought for a moment before he replied, “Depends on the grading system?”

“The grading system doesn’t matter.” Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “Regardless of the grading system, you will definitely wonder how he did it, whether something fishy happened.”

Manager Sun hesitated and said, “So, you’re saying they think we’re tricking them?”

“Anyone would be extra cautious when it came to important cooperation like this.” Lu Zhou paused for a moment before he said, “We just have to prove it to them that we’re legit.”