Chapter 61 Shattered Cherry Blossoms

August, Texas.

The scorching sun hung glaringly in the sky.

In the suburbs of Houston, Bob's family was slumped on the sofa, enjoying their only solace after the air conditioner broke down—

A brand-new desk fan.

This was a bargain Bob had snatched up at "Walmart" last week.

The "Sanjiao" brand from Japan, costing only $55.

It was $15 cheaper than that outrageously expensive Chinese "Red Star."

"Buzz, buzz, buzz—"

The fan spun vigorously, bringing a hint of coolness to the sweltering house.

"Damn this weather."

Bob took a swig of cold beer, staring at the football game on TV.

"Hey, Susan, move the fan closer, set it to the highest setting!"

Susan rolled her eyes and reached out to turn the knob to "High."

At that very moment.

"Snap!"

A crisp crackling sound, followed by a tooth-gritting "crunch."

The fan blades, which were spinning at high speed, suddenly shattered!

A fragment burst through the protective mesh and struck Bob's arm.

"Shit!"

Bob let out a scream of pain and clutched his arm.

"I'm going to sue! I'm going to find the best lawyer!"

Bob stared at the base where only a bare, idling shaft remained, his roar shaking dust off the ceiling.

"I'm going to make those shorties who make this junk pay until they're bankrupt! Until they're begging on the streets!"

...

The same scene played out all across the North American continent within this week.

Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago...

Thousands of breakage accidents and hundreds of personal injury complaints flew toward major supermarkets like snowflakes.

The phones at Walmart's headquarters were ringing off the hook, and the purchasing director's once-shiny forehead was now covered in cold sweat.

The lines for returns stretched from the service counter to the parking lot.

Angry consumers from the Lighthouse Country waved lawyer's letters.

A storm concerning "quality" and "fraud" crossed the Pacific and lashed out fiercely toward Tokyo.

...

Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, Japan.

Top-floor conference room, headquarters of Sanjiao Electric Co., Ltd.

The atmosphere was as oppressive as a funeral service.

"Bakayaro!"

The President delivered a sharp slap to the face of the General Manager of Sales.

"Returns! Pulled from shelves across America! Massive compensation claims!"

The President grabbed a thick stack of documents and hurled them right at his face,

"Is this the market dominance you promised?"

"Is this the glory of 'Made in Great Japan'? Is this the craftsmanship spirit?!"

"You are throwing the company's face on the ground and stomping on it!"

The General Manager of Sales clutched his face and bowed at a ninety-degree angle.

Cold sweat dripped from the tip of his nose onto the carpet; he didn't dare utter a word of rebuttal, only glaring fiercely at the General Manager of Technology out of the corner of his eye.

"President! This isn't our fault!"

The General Manager of Sales suddenly looked up, shifting the blame quickly,

"It's the Technology Department! It's a product quality issue!"

"The reports from Walmart show that all the points of failure are identical—"

"The blades are breaking at the root!"

"This is a serious design flaw!"

"Nani?" the General Manager of Technology jumped up.

"Nonsense! Absolute bullshit!"

The General Manager of Technology pulled a vernier caliper and two fan blades from his briefcase and slammed them onto the table.

"We copied the Chinese 'Red Star' one-to-one!"

"Every curve, every chamfer, even the runner design of the injection port is exactly the same!"

He held up the broken blade, his eyes bloodshot:

"We used the best ABS particles from Sumitomo Chemical, and the injection molding machines are the most advanced models from Toshiba!"

"In terms of precision, we are ten times better than that Chinese workshop!"

"In terms of materials, we are a hundred times better!"

"Then why don't theirs break while ours do?" the President's cold voice hissed like a venomous snake.

The General Manager of Technology opened his mouth, his face turning the color of pig liver, but he couldn't say a single word.

He truly didn't know.

For the past month, dozens of engineers in the Technology Department had been scratching their heads until their scalps were raw.

They looked through microscopes and burned samples in spectrometers.

They even invited a fluid mechanics professor from the University of Tokyo to run the numbers, and the conclusion was always—

The stress concentration point at the root of the blade was designed in an extremely counter-intuitive way; theoretically, as long as the speed exceeded 1,000 RPM, it would inevitably break.

But that damn "Red Star," it just wouldn't break!

It was as if it were blessed by Eastern sorcery, remaining as steady as Mount Tai at the same rotational speed.

"Reporting!"

The conference room door was burst open.

The Deputy Manager of the Legal Department stumbled in, holding a fax he had just received, his face as pale as paper.

"President... something big has happened."

"What could be bigger than what's happening now?" the President gritted his teeth.

"It's China... the Red Star Service Cooperative."

The Deputy Legal Manager swallowed hard, his voice trembling,

"They have filed lawsuits simultaneously in New York, London, and Frankfurt."

"Suing us for what? Patent infringement?" the President sneered,

"With that kind of appearance design, a lawsuit could drag on for ten years without a result."

"No... not the appearance."

The Deputy Legal Manager handed over the fax, pointing to a line circled in red ink.

"They are suing us for... unfair competition and malicious defamation."

"They disclosed the technical parameters of that blade in the complaint." The Deputy Legal Manager's voice carried a hint of despair,

"They added 3% 'long-fiber reinforcing agent' to the blade material and paired it with a specific injection molding temperature and pressure curve, specifically to eliminate root stress."

"They said..."

"Said what? Read it!"

"They said that this root design exists specifically to complement this special material and process, and it is a technical moat unique to 'Red Star'."

"If one does not possess this formula and process, blindly copying the appearance is creating a 'time bomb'."

"Red Star claims they issued an announcement as early as the Canton Fair, warning peers not to imitate blindly, or else they would bear the consequences."

"Yet Sanjiao Electric ignored the warning, producing inferior products that endangered consumer safety and seriously damaged the reputation of 'products with similar appearance'—namely, Red Star."

Dead silence.

The entire conference room fell into a deathly silence.

The General Manager of Technology slumped into his chair, his eyes vacant.

A trap.

This was a technical trap.

That Chinese designer had calculated that there would be copycats from the very first stroke of the blueprints.

He deliberately left a fatal physical bug and then filled it with an exclusive material formula.

Whoever copies it, dies.

"They... they were fishing..." the General Manager of Technology muttered to himself,

"Such ruthless methods... such a poisonous scheme..."

Sanjiao Electric had lost big.

Massive compensation, the collapse of brand reputation, and a global sales ban.

This once-arrogant enterprise was, by a "Service Center" from the Northwest...

...nailed firmly to the pillar of shame with a tiny plastic fan blade.

...