Comrades, the liars have overlooked the common knowledge that the distilled spirits in their bottles first appeared in the Han dynasty, and that only fermented spirits were available during the reign of the Great Yu. The Han dynasty brick paintings prove that a revolution in the production of alcohol was launched right here in Liquorland.
Friends, just as water flows day and night in Sweet Spring River, the fine liquor of Liquorville flowed uninterrupted for a long time, eventually entering an age of maturity. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, a distillery by the name of Great Blessings appeared, as did a liquor of unknown origins named Charming Gaits. From this emerged a distillery called Blessings and Charm, which produced Liquorville’s finest brew: Great Clouds and Rain.
Legend has it that during the Shunzhi reign of the Qing lived a petty innkeeper by the name of Yuan Yi, whose honorific was Sanliu, or Three Six. He began by selling liquor, then went into the distilling business. Expert at assimilating the traditional technologies of Liquorville’s distillers, he aspired to become famous in the distiller’s art. Unhappily, he died before he could realize his ambitions. Not until his great-great grandson’s generation would his cherished wish come true. During the Qianlong Emperor’s reign in the Qing dynasty, Yuan’s great-great grandson, whose name was Jiuwu, or Nine Five, called upon his ancestor’s experience and his own rich understanding of the marketplace to set up shop on Daughter’s Well Street by the Temple of the Immortal Matron out beyond Liquorville’s East Gate.
Rumor had it that the eye of the sea existed beneath the Temple of the Immortal Matron, and that if it were ever disturbed, Liquorville would fall into the sea. In order to avert a watery disaster, the people pooled their money to erect a temple, then built a golden Matron and placed her atop the eye of the sea. Clouds of incense smoke filled the Temple of the Immortal Matron, especially on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month. On that day, a festive atmosphere accompanied the burning of incense. Young ladies from good families came out in droves, as did roughnecks who mingled with them to fondle their breasts and pinch their bottoms, eliciting shrieks of protest. Truly this was a treasured place to buy and sell liquor - the feng shui was just right. So Nine Five Yuan bought a piece of land near the Temple of the Immortal Matron and set up shop under the name Blessings and Charm. He also built a distillery beside Daughter’s Well.
Daughter’s Well was only one li distant from the Temple of the Immortal Matron. Its water came from Sweet Spring River; after passing through the natural filtration of sand and rocks, it bubbled up clear, sweet, and icy cold. It was considered Liquorville’s finest well. Popular legend had it that a beautiful woman had drowned in the well, and that after her death she turned into a cloud that enveloped the well and would not disperse. But Yuan’s great-great grandson had not forgotten that Daughter’s Well had been the source of fine water for Charming Gaits of an earlier era; not only was he a master of the distiller’s art, but, naturally, a man of superior historical vision as well Drawing on the water from Daughter’s Well for his new brew was significant for Blessings and Charm not only because ‘water is the lifeblood of liquor,’ but also because it had produced Charming Gaits, and, even more significantly, since ‘the gods are the soul of liquor,’ it contained the richness of historical culture.
Extraordinary ambition, extraordinary skills, and extraordinary well water led naturally to extraordinary beginnings. Great Clouds and Rain had no sooner come on the market than it was proclaimed a great success. Blessings and Charm was as busy as a marketplace, with workers and scholars and old hands and petty hooligans beating a path to the door. A poet by the name of Li Sandou -Three-Pint Li - wrote two poems in praise of the qualities of Great Clouds and Rain. Here they are:
Spring has long dwelt in the Temple of the Immortal Matron, Fragrant well water is transformed into puffy clouds. The face of a beautiful woman is a sight to behold, But a great brew has a man in its thrall.
With water for clothing and a cloud as his face, Liu Ling lies naked, drunk as a lord. Having drunk clouds and rain, there’s no need to dream, For it’s better than Song Yu’s romance with a fairy.
Admittedly replete with roughneck airs, the poems succeed admirably in capturing the unique appeal of Great Clouds and Rain.
There in front of the Temple of the Immortal Matron, in Blessings and Charm, with a shop in front and a distillery in the rear, beverage and consumer found it easy to meet. Devout pilgrims could see the large gold placard with its black lettering long before they reached the Temple: elegant yet unconventional, the wildcap handiwork belonged to Hairy Turtle Jin, the nationally renowned calligrapher. The scrolls on either side of the door had been chosen by the eminent scholar, Miss Ma Kuni. They read:
Enter with knitted brows and divided feelings Leave holding a loving heart in cupped hands
The shop was elegantly furnished, the embodiment of gentility. The central scroll, which hung from the main wall, was a colorful painting by one of Liquorland’s foremost artists, Miss Li Mengniang. It depicted the consort Yang Guifei drunk and in a state of dishabille, her buxom body glistening, especially her nipples, which were as red as cherries. Coming to this place to drink brought pleasure both to the mind and to the eye.
The drinking utensils were unique among all the wineshops in Liquorville. Here the goblets were fashioned as shapely women’s legs; they came in one-ounce, three-ounce, and eight-ounce sizes, to suit the customers’ wishes. Holding one of those legs and sampling its liquid contents brought unique pleasures. Beautiful, splendid. Beauteous splendor beyond compare.
Quality liquor, elegant surroundings, and a fine reputation produced an unending supply of strange tales and amusing anecdotes.
Legend has it that on a cold winter night during the Guangxu Reign of the Qing dynasty, as swirling snowflakes covered the ground, the proprietor of Blessings and Charm was about to close up shop when, in the hazy darkness, a man with a lantern, wearing a thick coat of snow, entered the shop and said that his lady guest had asked for some Great Clouds and Rain; he had braved the snowstorm to come for some. As luck would have it, they had sold out that day, and the proprietor could only convey his abject apologies. But the customer refused to leave, so moving the proprietor that he sent his apprentice to the storeroom to fetch more. But when the storeroom door swung open, releasing the fragrance locked up inside, the customer was unable to resist its appeal and ran inside with his lantern. In his attempt to block the customer’s way, the apprentice bumped the lantern, setting fire to its paper cover, which quickly spread to the storeroom itself, resulting in a disastrous conflagration. Flaming, flowing dragons of liquor, burning blue and bright, brought destruction not only to the storeroom and the shop, but to the Temple of the Immortal Matron across the way, reducing it to a pile of ashes. Keep in mind, dear readers, that it snowed heavily that night, turning the ground into rivers of splintered color. The surpassing beauty of blue tongues of fire snaking through the snowy landscape defies description. After the fire was out, its origin and progress took on the airs of mystery and wonder in the telling and retelling, so that when Blessings and Charm was rebuilt, its reputation and fiery demise brought in more business than ever. What had been a disastrous fire was transformed into a magnificent advertisement.
Great Clouds and Rain was not only mellow, sweet, clean, and delicious, it also had an incomparable redolence. One late spring day, one of the distillery workers accidentally dropped a lined basket of new liquor on the ground; as the contents flowed to the street, sending its redolence skyward, tears welled up in the eyes of strolling red-cheeked boys and girls, who began to wobble and weave. Just then, a passing flock of birds lost their bearings and fell out of the sky. Sinking fish and falling swallows [great feminine beauty], bewitching souls and spell-binding spirits. A thousand tender emotions. Ten thousand types of womanizing. As the poem goes:
A cup of Great Clouds and Rain moistens the throat, Ten thousand scenes appear before your eyes. This liquor should exist only
in heaven, How often can people taste such a glorious elixir?
Honored guests, friends, I've already laid out the attributes of our Great Clouds and Rain. I need only add the following: My father in law, Professor Yuan Shuangyu of the Liquorland Brewer’s College, is the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Mr Nine Five Yuan, the creator of Great Clouds and Rain! As a professor at the Brewer’s college, he has been generous in demonstrating the amazing skills handed down by his ancestors. Under his leadership, and with the concern and guidance of the Municipal Party Committee and government, we here in Liquorland have ridden the mighty steeds of reform and liberalization. In a mere ten years, building upon the foundation we inherited, we have created at least a dozen new liquors that compare favorably with Great Clouds and Rain, some actually surpassing it in quality. Such brands as Overlapping Green Ants or Red-Maned Stallion or Love at First Sight or Fire Clouds or Ximen Qing or Lin Daiyu Buries Blossoms … but even more inspiring is the fact that my father-in-law, Professor Yuan, went up to White Ape Mountain alone, his hair matted, his face dirty, an old man with a ruddy complexion, making friends with the apes and learning from beasts in the wild, absorbing the apes’ wisdom, continuing his ancestor’s tradition, and drawing lessons from outsiders’ experience, making the past serve the present, foreign things serve China, and apes serve humans, until, at last, success was his and he could take his place as a world leader with his city-toppling ape wine.
Ape wine will be solemnly introduced at the first annual Ape Liquor Festival!
A thousand ounces of gold is easily obtained, a single drop of Ape Liquor cannot be begged!
Friends! Don’t hesitate another second, come to Liquorland, and hurry!
Do not pass up this opportunity!
III
Dear Elder Brother Yidou
Your manuscript arrived safely.
As luck would have it, a publishing friend of mine dropped by, and I showed him ‘Liquorville.’ When he finished, he pounded the table and shouted, This has real potential. He said that if you can expand the story to seventy or eighty thousand words and add some graphics and photographs, you can publish it as a book. His house will assign it a number and assume editorial responsibility. All your city has to do is come up with a subvention and guarantee the purchase of ten thousand copies. He said that since you’ll have to prepare promotional materials for attendees to the first annual Ape Liquor Festival, why not include copies of an illustrated book? It will provide everyone with an accessible, readable history of Liquorland that they can keep for a long time. I think it’s a terrific idea. Talk it over with your mayor. You’ll probably have to give the publisher about 50,000 yuan, a trifling amount for Liquorland, wouldn’t you say? Please let me know as soon as possible, whatever you decide. That friend of mine was so interested in the concept that I gave him your address before he left. He may contact you directly.
As for naming your new brew and participating in the liquor-laws drafting group, since the potential benefits are apparent, I see no reason for false modesty. I accept your invitation. As soon as I put the finishing touches on my novel, I’ll leave for Liquorland. We can work out the details of all these matters then.
Best wishes for success in your writing,
Mo Yan
IV
… wah wah wah! When Ding Gou’er’s thoughts turned to Diamond Jin and all those baby boys who were eaten then excreted into toilets, feelings of personal responsibility and a sense of right and wrong, like the brilliant stars of the Big Dipper, lit up his consciousness, which had been flitting and fleeing in the darkness. At such times, he experienced sharp pains in the helixes of his ears and the tip of his nose, as if they had been pierced by poison darts. Instinctively he sat up - the sky spun, the earth tumbled, his head was as big as a willow basket - and forced his puffy eyelids open; four or five large gray shadows leaped away from his body and landed with dull, meaty thuds. At the same time he heard a high-pitched chirping. A strange bird? Some wild beast? The investigator imagined a grouse or a wild rabbit, even a flying dragon or a flying squirrel. A pair of flashing green eyes poked through the blurry background in front of him. He strained to roll his glassy, crusted eyes and moisten them with the secretions of his tear glands; the tears that glistened across his eyeballs carried the smell of cheap booze. After rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, the scene grew clearer. The first thing he could make out was a clutch of seven or eight large gray house rats glaring angrily and disgustingly at him through pitch-black eyes. The investigator’s stomach lurched at the sight of their pointy snouts, stiff whiskers, sagging bellies, and long, thin tails; his mouth opened, and out spewed a noxious stew of exotic foods, good liquor, and something very near to excrement. His throat felt as if it had been slit by a sharp knife, his nose ached, and his nostrils were stopped up by slimy objects that hadn’t quite made it out. Then a shiny, black fowling piece hanging on the wall caught his eye, and it was just the right image to bring him out of his dark funk. His thoughts turned immediately to his panicky flight from danger so long ago, and to the spectral old man engaged in the illegal sale of wonton, and to the old revolutionary caretaker of the Martyrs’ Cemetery, and to the dancing spirit of Maotai liquor, a red sash across its chest, and to the fiercely intimidating golden-coated dog … his mind was working full-speed, but his thoughts were a hopeless tangle, as if all the flowers were blooming at once. Like a dream, but not entirely; lifelike and fantastic at the same time. Thoughts of the voluptuous lady trucker thudded into the investigator’s mind, just as a large rat jumped onto his shoulder and, with incredible agility, took a bite out of his neck, forcing him to wipe his mind clean of all those random thoughts and concentrate on the here and now. With a shake of his body, he sent the rat flying, as a shriek came of its own accord up out of his throat, but was driven back where it came from by the bizarre scene in front of him. His mouth fell slack, his eyes had a dazed look. There, on his back on the brick bed lay the old revolutionary, blanketed by a dozen or more large rats. His nose and ears had already been gnawed off by the hungry rats - maybe it wasn’t really hunger that drove them on - and his lips had been chewed away, exposing his discolored gums. The mouth, which had once launched strings of witty remarks, was ugly beyond imagining, and the old man’s skull, shorn of its extraneous protrusions, presented a hideous sight. The rats, meanwhile, were working themselves into a frenzy as they attacked the old revolutionary’s hands. The white bones of hands that had once been so adept at wielding a rifle or a club looked like stripped willow branches, absent the skin that had once covered them. The investigator harbored good feelings toward the hardened old revolutionary, who had come to his aid when he needed it most. Rousing his weary body, he rushed up to drive away the rats, but was so startled to see their eyes change color as he bore down on them, from pitch black to a soft pink, then to a dark green, that he stopped in his tracks and backed off, all the way to the wall, where he watched as the rats bared their teeth, frothed at the mouth, and glared with rage, closing ranks to form an attack unit ready to charge. Feeling the fowling piece against his back, the investigator had a sudden inspiration. He spun around, grabbed the gun, took aim, and wrapped his finger around the trigger, standing at the ready, as if facing a menacing horde.
‘Don’t move!’ the investigator shouted. ‘One step closer and I’ll blow you away!’
The rats exchanged glances and gestures, mocking the investigator, who all but exploded in anger:
‘You nicking rats!’ he swore. ‘Now you’ll find out who you’re dealing with!’
The words were barely out of his mouth when an explosion tore through the room, like a thunderclap. A flash of fiery light sent clouds of gunsmoke rolling in the air. When the smoke cleared, the investigator was relieved to see that a single shot had decimated the rat ranks; those that survived the blast cursed their parents for not giving them four more legs, as they scurried across roofbeams, clung to cross beams, flew on eaves and walked on walls, until, in a
matter of seconds, they were gone without a trace. The investigator was alarmed to note that, while the blast from his fowling piece had killed or scattered the rats, it had also blown holes in the old revolutionary’s face, which now looked like a sieve. Hugging the shotgun to his chest, he fell back against the wall and slid to the floor on rubbery legs, his heart screaming out in agony. The old revolutionary obviously died under an assault by those rats, he reasoned, but who would believe him after seeing the man’s face all pitted with buckshot? People would jump to the conclusion that he had died from a shotgun blast to the face, which had then been further disfigured by rats. Ding Gou’er Ding Gou’er, this time you could jump into the Yangtze and not come out clean. The Yangtze is muddier even than the Yellow River. ‘When a sage appears, the Yellow River turns clean. Families everywhere gather to sail lanterns made of gourds and melons. What kind? White gourds, watermelons, and pumpkins. What kind of lanterns, what kind? Cucumber, squash, and brain gourd lanterns.’ This childhood folk song crisply and mysteriously pounded the eardrums of the distraught special investigator, distant at first, then nearer and nearer, getting clearer and clearer, louder and louder, until it expanded into a full-blown chorus of brilliant juvenile voices, like floating clouds and flowing water. And there, standing in the conductor’s spot in front of the boys’ chorus, more than a hundred members strong, was the son from whom he had been parted for so long. The boy was wearing a snow-white shirt and sky-blue shorts, like a cottony cloud floating in the sky, or a single gull soaring through the sea-blue heavens. Two rivulets of murky fluid, like warm liquor, flowed from the investigator’s eyes, soaking his cheeks and the corners of his mouth. He stood up and reached out to his son, but the blue and white little fellow drifted slowly away from him, the boy’s image in his eyes replaced by the ghastly scene he and the rats had created, a false yet indescribable scene of murder that was destined to rock Liquorland.