The Republic of Wine

not need to snack when they drink, so Diamond Jin and his ilk show what inferior drinkers they are by cooking infants to go with their liquor…

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,

Your student

Li Yidou