Chapter 256 Trouble at the Wafer Plant
Under the moonlight, Su Yuanshan and Li Mingliu walked farther and farther until they arrived at the entrance of a café.
The café had a rather melancholic name — Blues. Its decor was quite bourgeois, with wooden doors and windows in a Nordic style, and white-painted gravel piled up in the corners pretending to be snowdrifts. Even the sunshade umbrellas at the entrance were covered with white snow-like patterns.
All that was missing was a white-bearded old man in a red hat, and it could easily pass for late December instead of early September.
Under the sunshades, a string of colored lights flickered, and Chen Jianguo sat beneath one umbrella with a woman around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, each with a cup of coffee, chatting.
Seeing Su Yuanshan and Li Mingliu approaching, Chen Jianguo quickly stood up to greet them. The young woman also stood, smiling sweetly behind Chen Jianguo, stealing a few curious glances at Su Yuanshan.
"Old Li, Xiaoshan," Chen Jianguo called out in greeting. Spotting Zhou Xiaohui quickly approaching from not far behind, he waved at her and then turned to introduce the woman:
"This is the owner of Blues, Liu Yanqiao."
"Yanqiao, this is Yuanxin's Li Mingliu, President Li, and this is Su Yuanshan."
Su Yuanshan and Li Mingliu exchanged a glance, both instantly understanding the situation.
No wonder Chen Jianguo had arranged to meet at a café — clearly, he was dating the owner.
Since it was Chen Jianguo who had "captured" the café owner's heart, Su Yuanshan naturally had to give him face. He immediately smiled warmly and said,
"Hello, Sister Yanqiao. This café is really nice; you have great taste."
"Hehe, President Shan, you flatter me. It's just an imitation," Liu Yanqiao said confidently, stepping forward to shake hands with Su Yuanshan and Li Mingliu. After Chen Jianguo led them inside, she stayed outside waiting for Zhou Xiaohui to catch up.
The café didn't have private rooms, but it wasn't very crowded. Chen Jianguo led them to the most secluded booth available.
"Senior Brother, how come you didn't say you were dating someone?" Su Yuanshan teased as he sat down and casually glanced at the drinks menu. He realized it wasn't strictly a café — they also served steaks and such. It was more like a Western restaurant.
"You're asking me? How would I know?" Chen Jianguo laughed.
"At my age, it's perfectly fine to find a girlfriend, right?"
These days, love was clearly making Chen Jianguo radiant.
Plus, he had been liaising with several departments and frequently traveling nationwide to visit industry heavyweights — basically forced into socializing — so now he talked a lot more than Su Yuanshan remembered.
Clearly, the environment had changed him.
"No problem at all, I fully support it," Su Yuanshan said, glancing toward Liu Yanqiao, who was chatting and laughing with Zhou Xiaohui at another table.
"But I am a little curious about her background, her character, and her family education."
Chen Jianguo immediately turned to Li Mingliu and said,
"Old Li, isn't this guy way too old-fashioned?"
"Not just old-fashioned — worse than my mom!"
Li Mingliu nodded seriously.
Su Yuanshan looked at them, baffled.
"How am I old-fashioned?"
"Shouldn't the first reaction be to see how she looks?"
Li Mingliu retorted.
"Uh..."
Su Yuanshan knew he had been caught and chuckled awkwardly.
"Come on, everyone knows our senior brothers don't pick ugly girls. Even Senior Brother Wenjie managed to lock down Sister Yiwen... right?"
"Hahaha! If Old Wen doesn't lose weight soon, Sister Yiwen might just lose it — she's so petite... uh, better not go there," Chen Jianguo started teasing but stopped himself, realizing it wasn't appropriate.
The three of them laughed heartily. Before long, the café owner, Liu Yanqiao, personally brought over some pastries and fruit, greeted them, and then returned to the bar to prepare coffee.
...
"Back to business. Senior Brother, what's Dr. Zhang's current thinking?"
Su Yuanshan asked in a low voice as he peeled pistachios.
At this, Chen Jianguo became serious. He glanced around cautiously before answering quietly,
"Dr. Zhang is very conflicted right now. He still has three years until he can officially retire... You have to understand, he's quite sentimental about Texas Instruments."
Su Yuanshan hummed in acknowledgment.
He had thought a lot about how to retain Zhang Rujin.
Retaining him was absolutely necessary — that was the premise.
—In terms of both experience and industry connections, there was no one better suited than Old Zhang to lead the wafer plant's construction and development.
The semiconductor industry was one of the most relationship-dependent sectors out there.
Moreover, right now Zhang Rujin's background was clean — he wouldn't be entangled in the legal disputes between TSMC and others in later years.
As long as he was willing to stay, he definitely could.
Su Yuanshan also understood that Zhang Rujin genuinely wanted to help build the semiconductor industry in the mainland.
But as an old veteran, he still cared about leaving Texas Instruments "properly" and completing his 20-year career milestone there, meaning he hoped to stay until 1997 before officially joining Yuanxin.
However, once the wafer plant was up and running, there was no guarantee that Texas Instruments wouldn't try to recall him —
The current agreement only stated that Zhang Rujin would oversee the plant's setup, not that he would become its CEO — that role had to be filled by a Yuanxin person.
To address this risk, Zhang Rujin's idea was to recruit a batch of semiconductor talents from Taiwan and elsewhere, integrate them with mainland engineers, and build a solid operational structure for the plant. That way, even if he left later, the plant could still run smoothly.
But this created a "salary discrimination" problem —
The engineers recruited from Taiwan were highly paid, much more than mainland newcomers.
Simply put, the salaries for these Taiwanese hires were more than ten times what domestic engineers earned for similar positions.
Su Yuanshan would have liked to offer the same high salaries to mainland engineers, but doing so would massively inflate the plant's operating costs and destabilize Yuanxin's overall salary structure.
Zhang Rujin's current approach was to only recruit top-level talent — from Italy, Silicon Valley, and Taiwan's diaspora in Silicon Valley.
These elite talents were lured with stock options and benefits.
But relying solely on elites wouldn't be enough to sustain full wafer plant operations.
And once Zhang Rujin left, it was uncertain whether anyone could effectively manage them.
Currently, the plant's personnel structure revolved around Zhang Rujin:
The top-level executives were international experts recruited through his network, the mid-levels were "sea turtles" returning from Singapore, and the grassroots were made up of fresh graduates.
—Yes, the batch of 300 students sent by the University of Electronic Science and Technology and other domestic universities to Singapore two years ago had begun returning.
But even if all 300 returned, it would still be far from enough to operate a wafer plant that had absorbed over a billion US dollars of investment.
For the plant to turn a profit and achieve technological breakthroughs, even more experienced talent would be needed.
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