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
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.
