The Republic of Wine

  Chapter Nine

  I

  Dear Mo Yan, Sir

  Greetings!

  If I’m not mistaken, I’ve sent you eight of my stories, yet I haven’t heard a word from the venerable editors of Citizens’ Literature. In my view, giving an aspiring young writer the cold shoulder like that is highly inappropriate. Since they have opened shop, they have an obligation to treat anyone who submits a manuscript with dignity and respect. As the saying goes, ‘Heaven turns and the earth spins; you go up, and I go down,’ or ‘For two mountains to meet is unlikely, but for two people it is a common occurrence.’ Who knows, Zhou Bao and Li Xiaobao might find themselves in front of the business end of my rifle one day. From now on, Sir, I refuse to contribute to Citizens’ Literature. We may be poor, but not in strength of character. It’s a big world out there, and there’s a forest of publications, so why hang myself on that particular tree? Don’t you agree?

  Preparations for our first annual Ape Liquor Festival are well underway. I also came up with a plan to revitalize reserve stocks of our sickness wine, which I took to the Municipal Alcoholic Beverage Quality Control Group, where several tasters sampled the stuff after cleansing their palates, and determined that it had a unique taste, comparable to a delicate, melancholic beauty. The Municipal Alcoholic Beverage Naming Association gave this liquor the name Sick Xi Shi, after the legendary beauty. I didn’t think that was appropriate, since the word ‘sick’ is clearly inauspicious, and can only produce dark clouds in the hearts of consumers, which will in turn have an adverse effect on sales. I urged them to change Sick Xi Shi to Xi Shi’s Frown or in Daiyu Buries Blossoms, since both of those include beautiful women, but sound warmer, more tender, and appeal to people’s affectionate nature. But the folk at the Municipal Alcoholic Beverage Naming Association, who are jealous and conservative by nature, were unyielding about the name Sick Xi Shi. My patience exhausted, I went, liquor in hand, to see the Mayor’s secretary, who was so deeply moved by my gift of fine liquor and my unflagging sense of honor that he took me to see the Mayor, who, after hearing my tale, pounded the table and jumped to her feet, wide-eyed and scowling. She pounded the table again before sitting down and picking up the telephone. She shouted into it for a moment or two, until the head of the Alcoholic Beverage Naming Association came on, and got a royal chewing out from a woman who speaks with the force of justice, bold and assured, unyielding even if Mount Tai were to crush down on her. I couldn’t see the man on the other end of the line, but I could picture the scene: The head of the Alcoholic Beverage Naming Association seated on the floor with his legs folded, bean-sized drops of sweat dotting his forehead. The Mayor sang my praises, saying that my efforts on behalf of the first annual Ape Liquor Festival constituted great meritorious service to all of Liquorland. Then she asked, in a tender voice, about my family background, my work, my hobbies, and my relations with my teachers and my friends; I felt as if a spring had burst forth in my heart. I told her everything, holding back nothing. The Mayor was particularly concerned with your situation, Sir, and personally extended an invitation to attend our Ape Liquor Festival. When I brought up the matter of travel expenses, she gave a mildly contemptuous snort and said, The dregs from liquor bottles in Liquorland alone would be enough to take care of ten Mo Yans.

  Sir, I’ve decided to hand the naming rights for this liquor to you. Xi Shi’s Frown or in Daiyu Buries Blossoms, it’s your choice. Unless, of course, you can come up with something even better. The Mayor has said shell give you a thousand in gold for every word. Naturally, we’d like you to write some promotional copy for this liquor, so we can advertise it in prime time on CTV, whatever the cost. We want to introduce Xi Shi’s Frown or in Daiyu Buries Blossoms to every individual in the nation, nay, to everyone in the world. You can see the importance of what you write; it must be light and humorous, yet filled with moving images, so that anyone watching TV will feel as if they were face to face with little sister Lin Daiyu or with big sister Xi Shi: Crinkled brow, hands held to her breast, a hoe over her shoulder, pursed cherry lips, she glides along like a willow frond swaying in a breeze. Who would have the heart not to buy it? Especially the lovesick, the lovelorn, and those excitable young men and women with a modicum of literary taste, who would pawn their own trousers to buy it and drink it and enjoy it and use it to cure their love maladies, or sugar-coat it to present to their lovers as a material blitzkrieg with psychological overtones or a psychological stimulus with material overtones in order to get what they want. With the guidance of your sentimental, bleeding-heart advertising copy, this sickness wine will be transformed into an abnormal taste of love capable of producing soul-stirring obsessions, and will anesthetize the feeble hearts of China’s hordes of underdeveloped petit-bourgeois boys and girls who pattern themselves after the characters in the romantic novels of which they are so fond, giving them ideals, hope, and strength, and keep them from killing themselves over their emotions. This will become the liquor of love, which will stun the world; its flaws will be transformed into conspicuously unique qualities. Sir, it is a fact that many tastes are acquired, not innate; no one is willing to call bad something the rest of the world calls good; great authority is vested in the preference of the masses, like the power the Director of the Municipal Party Organization Department wields over a grass-roots Party cadre; if he says you’re good, you’re good whether you’re good or bad; if he says you’re bad, you’re bad whether you’re bad or good. Besides, drinking liquor, as with the consumption of all food and drink, is a habit that becomes a mania: always preferring something new over something old, always ready to take a risk, always seeking a more intense high. Much gourmandism results from anti-traditionalism and a disdain for the law. When one tires of eating fresh, white tofu, one turns to moldy, gummy, stinky tofu or pickled tofu; when one tires of eating fresh, tasty pork, one dines on rotten, maggot-ridden meat. Following that logic, when one tires of imbibing ambrosial spirits and jadelike brews, one seeks out strangely bitter or spicy or sour or dank flavors to excite the taste buds and the membranes of the mouth. So long as we lead the way, there isn’t a liquor made we can’t sell to the public. I hope that while you’re writing your novel, you’ll make time to write something along these lines. With the grandiose comments of our Mayor as security, your efforts will be well rewarded. You might even earn considerably more for this modest advertising copy than for six grueling months of writing fiction.

  In recent days I’ve been busily involved in a magnificent idea revealed by the Mayor during our discussions: She would like me to head up a writing group charged with the creation of a set of liquor laws.’ Naturally, these will constitute the basic laws concerning liquor in all conceivable aspects. I’m not exaggerating when I say that, if successful, this will usher in a new era where liquor is concerned, one that will light the way for thousands of years, producing a halo that will shine down on ten thousand generations. This will be a creation of historical proportions. I cordially invite you to join our liquor-law drafting group. Even if you are unable to participate in the actual writing, you can serve as chief adviser. Please do not deny me in this endeavor.

  I hope you’ll forgive me for writing such a disjointed, hopelessly muddled letter, for which liquor is to blame, f m enclosing a story I wrote last night when I was in my cups. I invite your criticisms. It’s up to you whether or not you submit it for publication. I wrote it in pursuit of the auspiciousness of a certain number. I have always revered the number nine, and this piece, entitled ‘Liquorville,’ is my ninth story; and, of course, the word liquor has the same sound as the number nine. I hope it is like a bright new star, lighting up my dark past and the rugged path that lies ahead of me.

  I await your arrival. Our mountains await your arrival, as do our waters, our young men, and our young women. Those young women resemble flowers from whose mouths emerge a redolence of liquor that is like heavenly music…

  With reverence, I wish you

  Peace and happiness,
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  Your student

  Li Yidou

  II

  Liquorville, by Li Yidou

  Whether you travel by airplane, steamship, camel, or donkey, you can reach Liquorville from any spot on earth. There is no shortage of beautiful places in the world, but few of those places are more beautiful than Liquorville. Actually, the word ‘few’ is too vague -I prefer the word ‘none.’ The citizens of Liquorville are straightforward. Just like an explosive projectile, except that the casing of a projectile is filled with coiled wire, while the wires inside Liquorville residents run straight from their mouths down to their rectums, without a single twist or curve. That should tell what you need to know about the disposition of Liquorville residents. To state the issue even more clearly, Liquorville is the capital of Liquorland. I hope my explanation doesn’t lead to any misunderstandings.

  The fragrance of liquor emanating from Liquorland can be detected for a hundred li in any direction, and even people with a blunted sense of smell can detect it from fifty li. Don’t accuse me of witchcraft if I reveal that, when Boeing jets fly over Liquorland, they perform loop-the-loops, in spry yet intoxicated innocence, never, however, jeopardizing their safety. Comrades, ladies, gentlemen, friends, you needn’t be anxious, for while you sit in the safety of your airplanes, you are like spry yet intoxicated cute little puppies; the wonderful, exotic aroma is an open invitation to enjoy your experience of passing, of soaking up one of the world’s most captivating smells as you pass over Liquorland.

  The municipal government and Party headquarters are located smack in the center of Liquorville. A towering white liquor vat stands in the heart of the Party compound, while a towering black cask has been placed in the middle of the government compound. Please, folks, don’t assume there’s a note of sarcasm there, because there isn’t. Since the era of reforms and liberalization was launched, Party committees and government offices everywhere, in order to speedily improve the people’s lives, have racked their brains, devised proposals, and come up with plans to integrate the current local realities with Party spirit to create workable scenarios and schemes: Those in the mountains live off the mountains, those near water make their living from the water, those with fine scenery develop the tourist industry, those with tobacco land produce tobacco… after rolling like the wind and clouds for over a decade, this has produced Ghost City, Tobacco Capital, Fireworks Town … here in Liquorland the liquor is plentiful and of excellent quality, so the Municipal Party Committee and the government have established a Brewer’s College, and are making plans for a distillery museum, expanding twenty distilleries, and building three gigantic distilleries that incorporate the finest of the world’s distilling art. With liquor as the engine, we have spurred the development of special services for our male visitors, the restaurant business, the raising of exotic birds and animals … now the fragrance of liquor floats above every nook and cranny of Liquorland. There are thousands of inns and taverns in Liquorville, their bright lights shining day and night above the sound of glasses clinking noisily; Liquorland’s fine liquors and superb victuals draw hordes of visitors, diners, and drunks, domestic and international, to take tours, to drink, and to eat fine food, although the most important visitors are liquor distributors who carry our fine liquor and sterling reputation to every corner of the earth. Our excellent liquor travels abroad, excellent greenbacks make the trip back. In recent years, Liquorland’s annual tax bill has soared into the hundreds of millions, a huge contribution to the nation, while, at the same time, our citizens’ standard of living has kept improving. Our people now live comfortably, are on their way to becoming well off, and dream of the day when they can call themselves rich. What, you ask, is meant by Vieh’? ‘Communism,’ that’s what. Now that you’ve read to this point, dear readers, you understand why the Municipal Party Committee and government built their huge vat and cask.

  Having dispensed with idle talk, dear readers, it’s time for my story to get on track and for me to return to Liquorville. While you, ladies and gentlemen, take in the lovely sights of Liquorland and enjoy the fragrant smell of its liquor and sample its wonderful flavor, please listen to what I have to say and enjoy to your hearts’ content drinking songs sung by our lovely maidens. No need to be polite. When good friends drink together, a thousand cups is too little; when the talk is not congenial, half a sentence is too much. The rack in front of you is filled with Liquorland’s finest brews, the table behind it piled high with delectables. I invite you to eat and drink as much as you can, as much as you need. It’s free, all of it. As executive director of the publicity preparatory committee, I had originally intended to collect fifty cents from each of you as a symbolic donation for today’s meal, but the Mayor said that was the hypocritical equivalent of erecting a memorial archway to the chastity of a prostitute, that since fifty cents wouldn’t be enough for half a donkey dick, why ask for anything? Besides, you are all honored guests who have traveled far to get here; by charging you for food, people everywhere would laugh until their teeth fell out, and dentists would be the only ones to benefit -which reminds me: Liquorville’s Dental Academy task force has developed a tooth-filling material that never wears out, so if any of you need dental work, please take care of it while you’re here, free of charge. This material is impervious to cold, heat, sour or sweet flavors; never again will any food stand up to your teeth when you chew, no matter how stubborn. But back to the subject at hand. People have been distilling liquor here in Liquorville for at least 3,000 years, as we learn from archaeological excavations. I call your attention to the video: Beneath this site, called Moonbeam Heap, lie the ruins of an ancient city, and from it over 3,000 relics have been recovered, half of them liquor vessels: this is a goblet, this one a jug, this is a liquor urn, this a drinking bowl, this a tumbler, and this one is a tripod liquor bowl… you name it, it’s there. Experts have dated the site as being 3,500 years old, which puts it at the end of the Shang dynasty. Even back in those ancient times, this was a place where glasses clinked loudly and the aroma of fine liquor hung in the air. These days an odious trend has gripped the world of liquor: everyone seems to be trying to make a tiger’s skin out of a personal banner. If the legendary Yu got drunk on your liquor, the great emperor Kangxi got drunk on mine; if the consort Yang Guifei was infatuated by your liquor, then the emperor Han Wudi stumbled around after drinking mine and so on and so forth, creating an absurd tradition and bringing great harm to many. Here in Liquorville we seek truth from facts and always prove our case. Friends, take a look at this brick. It’s not an ordinary brick. No, it’s a portrait from the Eastern Han, dug up right here in Liquorville. The painting depicts the distilling of liquor, and from it we are happy to learn that, way back then, in Liquorland the production of alcoholic beverages already involved cooperative labor. A woman at the top of the painting is holding a large pot over a liquor vat in her left hand and stirring the cooling water with her right. A man to her right is heating the water in the vat. The man standing to the left of the liquor trough carefully watches the flow of liquor. At the bottom of the picture, a man with two buckets on a carrying pole is responsible for ensuring that there’s enough water… this painting graphically shows how liquor was produced thousands of years ago, and corresponds perfectly to a description of the process in the chapter ‘Sorghum Wine’ in the novel Red Sorghum by my mentor, Mr Mo Yan. Now please look at the second brick, called The Wineshop.’ Wine jugs line the street in front of the shop, the proprietor stands behind the counter, and two prospective customers in the upper left-hand corner are rushing joyfully toward the shop. Now the third brick, named ‘The Banquet.’ Seven people are seated around a table, three in the middle and two on either side, a proper banquet. Glasses and goblets are arrayed in front of dishes piled high with food. The diners are raising their glasses and urging one another to eat and drink, just the way we do now. Well, I’ve prattled on long enough. These three bricks constitute firm and powerful evidence that Liquorville is the fountain
head of liquor and the liquor culture of the Chinese race, thoroughly discrediting rumors about the history of alcoholic beverages - into the dustbin with Great Yu Bottle and Xiang Yu Wine Glass. Or, the consort Yang Guifei left Liquorland to get married, and Han Wudi is a son of Liquorland. All you boasters and liars, quickly pour your drinks into the river. The liquor of Liquorville is the liquor of history; the liquor of Liquorville is soaked in the classics of Han culture.