"For instance, there are tens of thousands of wires, and no mistake can be made in connecting them."

Several technology breakthroughs have been made during the retooling process. For instance, researchers at IHEP have developed a spectrometer superconducting magnet needed for the retooling, and remolded the valve box.

Technology aside, money was also a problem for the retooling project. The government no longer guaranteed all the expenses of the project as it would have years ago under the planned economy. Although the government invested 540 million yuan ($79 million), the CAS had to raise 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) through other channels.

Significant breakthroughs

"This can no longer be postponed!" This sentence written by Zhou Enlai, the late premier of China, is hung on the left wall in the lobby of IHEP, glazed in gold.

Under the direction of Zhou, IHEP was set up by the CAS on September 11, 1972. The Central Government decided to build BEPC in 1982, and the 50,000-square-meter complex broke ground in October 1984. Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader who launched reforms in the late 1970s laid the first foundation of the construction project. Addressing the controversy over whether to build BEPC back then, Deng said "I believe that this could not be wrong."

The construction was completed in four years, and the first collision was made on October 16, 1988. People's Daily, the official paper of the CPC Central Committee, said in its editorial that BEPC was a significant breakthrough in high technology after the invention of the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb and the satellite.

BEPC soon became one of the eight largest high-energy physics research centers. With BEPC, Chinese scientists have made many important findings. Many foreign scientists have also been invited to visit BEPC, making it a platform for international scientific exchanges.

While visiting the retooling project of BEPC on this November 4, Premier Wen Jiabao met with American scientists who were in Beijing for a meeting on high-energy physics. Wen highly commended the role BEPC played in promoting international scientific cooperation.

Necessitated by the needs for international exchange on BEPC, IHEP was the first organization to use worldwide Internet in China. In 1988, when most of the computers in China were in a "primeval age," IHEP computers were already connected to the world. In the early 1990s, the institute had its own web page.

Multiple tasks

Most people would think that electron and positron colliders have no direct bearing on their daily lives. Few people know that BEPC played a role in combating severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

BEPC is not only used in the study of particles. It can be used for multiple tasks. In 2002, the first synchronous radiation laboratory specializing in analyzing the structure of large molecules was built in BSRF, part of BEPC. The laboratory has become an important platform for gene research. Scientists analyzed the protein structure of the SARS virus there, providing important information for treating the disease.

In 2004, scientists used the laboratory to study the photosynthesis process of spinach and made important findings. Studies on the structure of nano material have also been carried out in the laboratory.

In fact, the BSRF in BECP is the only X-ray synchronous radiation facility in China, and it is open to the public. Each year, scientists from over 100 research institutes or universities across the country conduct hundreds of experiments here. The experiments are in such fields as material science, life science, natural resources and environment, and microelectronics. In addition to receiving domestic scientists, BEPC has been used by scientists from other countries.

To meet the high demand, BEPC is in operation for more than 10 months each year, longer than most other colliders around the world.