Xing Lu is a research professor at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is the principal investigator for the NSFC excellent young scientists fund, NSFC general program, CAS Bairen B program, and theNatural Science Foundation of Shanghai ‘Originality and Exploration’ program, among others. His research focusses on molecular clouds and star formation in the Milky Way—particularly within the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) around the Galactic Center—using radio and submillimeter interferometers including ALMA, the SMA, and JVLA. He has served as a reviewer for telescope proposal committees of JWST and ALMA (including their large/legacy programs) and a member of the JCMT Time Allocation Committee. He has published 14 first/corresponding-author papers in journals including Nature Astronomy and The Astrophysical Journal.The central 500 pc of our Galaxy, known as the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), contains a huge reservoir of dense molecular gas. Due to the extreme physical conditions around the Galactic Center, star formation in the CMZ exhibits characteristics distinct from those in the solar neighborhood, such as a star formation efficiency approximately ten times lower, and a potentially top-heavy initial mass function (IMF). To explore the origins of these peculiar star formation activities, we have initiated an ALMA observational campaign, termed CONCERT, which peers into molecular clouds, dense cores, and accretion disks in the CMZ. In this talk, I will highlight recent findings from our studies of 0.01-pc dense cores and pc-scale filaments within molecular clouds in the CMZ. Key results include: i) The cores are primarily bound by external pressure, contrasting with their counterparts in Galactic disk clouds, which are predominately bound by self0gravity. ii) Spectral indices derived from 1.3 mm and 3 mm continuum emission of the cores are intriguingly low, a feature not observed in Galactic disk clouds (e.g., those studied in the ALMA-IMF project), suggesting beam-diluted optically thick substructures or the presence of large dust grains. iii) A unique class of slim filaments seen in several shock tracers and complex organic molecules but not in dust continuum are found to be in dynamically inequilibrium and could dissipate soon, which may be related to the widespread emission of SiO and complex organic molecules in the CMZ. iv) Intriguing absorption filaments, which were discovered in 2014 using two molecular lines in one cloud, are revealed in more molecules and toward more clouds, whose nature is still uncertain.