The Republic of Wine

Translator’s Note

For the Chinese reader, The Republic of Wine packs quite a wallop, much like the colorless liquors distilled in Mo Yan’s home province of Shandong and elsewhere in China, Maotai being the most famous. Few contemporary works have exposed and satirized the political structure of post-Mao China, or the enduring obsession of the Chinese about food, with the wit and venom of this explosive novel; none even approaches its structural inventiveness. As with many of Mo Yan’s novels, The Republic of Wine was considered extremely subversive, and could be published in China only after a Taiwanese edition appeared in 1992. Subsequently included in his multi-volume collected works under the new title Republic of Drunks (Mingding guo), it continues to thrill some and horrify others.

In the book, letter-writer Mo Yan tells Li Yidou that he has long wanted to write a novel on liquor.’ Well, here it is, under the terse but revealing title of Jiu guo, the literal meaning of which is ‘country of alcohol.’ (The generic term jiu refers to all alcoholic beverages, and must be expanded adjectivally to indicate type.) Most of what is guzzled in The Republic of Wine is actually 120-proof and stronger liquor made of sorghum or other grains.

Beyond the characters’ preoccupation with food, drink, and sex, the satiric tone and fantastic occurrences, and the imaginative narrative framework, Mo Yan has filled his novel with puns, a variety of stylistic prose, allusions – classical and modern, political and literary, elegant and scatological – and many Shandong localisms. It would serve little purpose to explicate them here, particularly since a non-Chinese reader could not conceivably ‘gef them all. It does not take cultural understanding to realize that a crack investigator would be unlikely to go anywhere in a truck, Liberation or not, although few readers could be expected to know the answer to the lady trucker’s question, ‘Know why this road’s in such terrible shape?’ (the locals make sure it stays that way so they can pick up lumps of coal that are dislodged from trucks leaving the mine).

I have, as far as possible, remained faithful to Mo Yan’s original, not entirely consistent, text. I can only hope that the enjoyment and understanding gained from this translation outstrip the losses.

So, after this brief hors-d’oeuvre: Bon appetit! Cheers!