The Chinese Method

My boss is interested in the Chinese method. All day long, instead of making repairs, he walks around the shop and examines the guitars for signs of the Chinese method in manufacturing.

“China,” he says, ticking them off: “Korea: worthless. China.”

Guitars built in the Chinese method are his main moneymaker, because they are both playable and affordable. The Chinese method of guitar manufacture is rapidly cornering the market.

Our boss is convinced that the Chinese method is superior to our method in most areas, and that soon, whether we want to our not, we will be forced to adopt the Chinese method because of its overwhelming power and subtlety.

Yesterday a customer complained about the drought, and the boss informed him that the Chinese method of cloud-seeding, whereby rockets containing oxidizers are shot into the middle of clouds, creating precipitation, is catching on in many countries around the world.

I can see why the boss would be excited about the Chinese method. He is interested in efficiency, and everybody agrees that the Chinese method is very efficient. Recently he turned of the hot water heater in the bathroom, and when Wilson, the bass teacher, who drinks too much and is sometimes absent from lessons, complained, the boss told him that the Chinese method of heating discourages waste and that nobody needs hot water to wash their hands. He says that soon energy shortages will force us all to adopt the Chinese method.

I wish there was a Chinese method for the production of whiskey, Wilson says, maybe that way it would be cheaper, and I could use it keep warm. Wilson is open about his drinking in a way that dares the boss to fire him, but the boss is so timid in an argument that all he can do is wait until Wilson is gone and complain that under the Chinese method of labor management it would be easy for him to fire Wilson, because there would be ten people without alcohol problems waiting to take his place.

I feel the boss’ obsession with the Chinese method is distracting him from work, because the repair orders and the bills are terribly backed up.

I work all day, planing the necks of guitars and setting the action against the fretboard so that all the notes go down the scale in perfect harmony, and when I wince from what I’m sure is carpal tunnel my boss suggests that I should try the Chinese method of medicine, which involves cupping and tui na massage. I do not remind him that I am not paid enough to afford such treatments because I remember his rant about the Chinese method of labor management.

Many people are concerned that the Chinese method of economics. People suggest that there are parts of the Chinese method we might learn and apply to our own economic system, before it’s too late.

Recently the boss developed a plan, which he learned from a book on the Chinese method of agriculture, in which all of the teachers who work above the store would be asked to rent their rooms by the day, regardless of whether they had any actual students to teach, under the theory that they can find other uses for the rooms when the students are not there. The teachers, who do not share the bosses attitude towards the infallibility of the Chinese method, were not interested, and the boss, who is full of schemes but lacks the courage to put them into practice, was forced to relinquish his dream.

In the aftermath of this conflict, the guitar teacher, Andrew, placed a book on the boss’ desk, the Tao Te Ching, in the hopes that he might in the future employ the Chinese method of philosophical relaxation. Andrew is the best off of all of us, because he has his degree in music from a reputable institution, and is a specialist in all styles, including the Chinese method of music, which he claims is so pure and simple it only requires five notes to approximate the sound of water falling on mossy stone.

The teachers and I worry that the store is losing money, because we see the boss is only eating rice and vegetables at his work bench, and that he never eats out anymore, but soon enough he explains that he is only adopting the Chinese method towards nutrition, in which grains, beans, and vegetables strengthen the mind and the body. We wonder if he is being intentionally opaque; we have heard that the Chinese method of management does not encourage communication towards the laboring class.

Customers sometime lambast the boss for his seemingly nonsensical pricing structure concerning repairs, but Andrew, who is smarter than the rest of us, has suggested that the boss is adopting the Chinese method towards economic policy, in which figures are intentionally inflated by the central bureaucracy in service of fiscal necessity. Wilson, whose drinking has worsened noticeably, suggests that the boss study the Chinese method of learning how to do his damn job.

Edwin, the drum teacher, who is younger than the rest of us, has been studying the Chinese method towards the teaching of English, in the hopes that he might find a job abroad in case he is fired by the boss or our labor situation becomes untenable.

Recently the boss’ reactions to the Chinese method have become increasingly paranoid. He watches replays of the Beijing Olympics, and comments on the Chinese method of organization in awed and frightened tones.

The boss shared with me recently information he gleaned from a friend about the Chinese method towards arms manufacturing. His friend, who is a policeman and therefore susceptible to paranoid delusions, claims that the Chinese method of military export involves implanting all of their armaments with tiny chips, so that in the event of a war between China and another country all weapons made in China would either fail to work or turn against their users. The boss is very concerned that this subtle Chinese method of defense has completely turned the tables in the geopolitical arena.

Edwin came downstairs recently with a small black camera that he discovered in the corner of his lesson room, and although the boss insisted he knew nothing about it the rest of us took it as evidence that the boss has begun adopting the Chinese method of personal surveillance, to an unknown end.

Wilson, who no longer even bothers to hide the whiskey bottle clanking in his Jansport backpack, has taken to claiming that he knows more about the Chinese method than the boss does. For instance, he claims to know a great deal about the Chinese method of self-defense, or kung fu. He claims that if the boss ever tries anything he will apply his knowledge of the Chinese method of self-defense to the boss personally. There is some sort of conflict brewing between the boss and Wilson, but in accordance with the Chinese method of strategic military planning each of them has been strengthening their position without making their intentions known.

The teachers have fewer students than they used to, owing at least in part to the boss’ expansion of the Chinese method of heating to include the upper levels of the store, so that the lesson rooms are not entirely comfortable. It is only November, but Andrew, who views everything quite calmly, is already claiming to be employing the Chinese method of meditation in which you lower your body temperature to adapt to sub-optimal atmospheric conditions. I am fairly certain that the students are not familiar with this Chinese method of personal comfort.

Yesterday the boss refused to pay Wilson for one of his lessons, claiming he had taken a packet of bass strings from the counter without paying for it, and that he was getting off light, because if he were following the Chinese method of justice he would have cut off Wilson’s hand. Wilson, who speaks remarkably well even under the influence, remarked that the boss was mistaking the Chinese method for some other method, perhaps the fundamentalist Islamic method or the Texas method. He also threatened, calmly, to use the Chinese method of martial arts with which he was more than a little familiar on the boss if he didn’t pay him the money he was owed. In deference to the Chinese method of communal decision-making, the boss asked the rest of us if we thought it was fair for Wilson to take bass strings from the counter, and when none of us spoke up he paid Wilson the little money he was owed and told him never to come back.

There are now more fewer instruments than ever in the repair queue, and the boss is convinced that this shortfall is a result of Wilson’s engagement in the Chinese method of slander, waging a whisper campaign against him in the local musical community. Edwin has been put to work warding off creditors, but mostly he stands at the front desk, studying the Chinese method of English instruction and trying to avoid looking at the phone. Andrew is ensconced in the upstairs room, where he claims to be working on a particularly advanced form of the Chinese method in music whereby the precise location of two notes in a time-space continuum vibrate together and manifest in a chi-construction of luminous joy.

Me, I work my fingers to the bone while the boss neglects the more difficult repairs in favor of concocting some sort of Chinese method to murder Wilson in which the poisons used would be virtually undetectable. I am aware that I am being exploited, but due to the failure of our economic method in the face of the Chinese method there are few other jobs available.

Finally, the boss’ use of the Chinese method of personal surveillance has borne fruit. He claims that he has video evidence of Wilson breaking into the store at night, using some sort of Chinese method of martial arts to break the padlock on the door with his foot. All of us feel skeptical about this, especially because the boss told us about it while wearing a peaked military cap made in the Chinese method. By now the store is so empty that it would be easy to practice the Chinese method of tai-chi in the middle of the front room, because the boss no longer has the money with which to buy new stock. The boss claims this is because Wilson has stolen most of the instruments made in the Chinese method, which are his biggest sellers, and that without the revenue these instruments bring he cannot buy anything else, but we are no longer convinced by his excuses. We say we are tired of his obsessions with the Chinese method, and that we are all quitting.

This is when the boss, in a very unsubtle maneuver that belies his stated interest in the Chinese method, closes the grate of the store behind us, locks it, and forces us against the wall. He says that we are to engage immediately in the Chinese method of self-criticism, and explain how it was that we aided Wilson in his cowardly and undeserved attacks on the store which had for so long provided him his livelihood.

Andrew, who thinks he is very smart, says that he is sorry, that he lent Wilson a book on the Chinese method of breaking and entering, but that he never thought it would end like this, and the boss, sensing this is a lie, knocks him out with the butt of the rifle.

Edwin, who is less smart than Andrew but smarter than me, takes the Chinese method of self-criticism at face value and begins outlining all of the things that are wrong with him, through his tears, including his poor posture and his inability to correctly identify a gerund, and the boss, sensing futility, knocks him out with the butt of the rifle.

I am not knowledgeable in the Chinese method, so I say nothing.

Since I am the only one remaining who the boss feels might have information about Wilson, he locks me in the basement and subjects me to series of interrogations based on the Chinese method: “Medium-Starvation,” “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and “Exploitation of Physical Weakness.”

This is where I have been for several days now, and I wonder where the boss is; whether he is working on new Chinese methods by which to retrieve information I most certainly do not possess, or if he has met his own end aboveground. Perhaps the financial authorities, who are increasingly familiar with the Chinese method of fraud, have caught up to him. Maybe the police, who are now encouraged to use the Chinese method in apprehending suspects, have made short work of him.

In my time down here I have come to regret my lack of knowledge of the Chinese method, and if I ever get back aboveground I have made a promise to myself that I will devote my life to study, in the hopes that I might better myself and make a place for myself in the new world order. For now, I mainly concentrate on a Chinese method – or so I think, unless it is Indian, or even Indonesian – which I read of once as a child, in which a prisoner sings a song and charms his ropes into rising so far into the air that the rope forms a bridge into another, brighter world. I maintain some hope that by utilizing this Chinese method of rope climbing, this particular prisoner can at last find peace.

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