The Republic of Wine

I

Special Investigator Ding Gou’er of the Higher Procuratorate climbed aboard a Liberation truck and set out for the Mount Luo Coal Mine to undertake a special investigation. He was thinking so hard as he rode along that his head swelled until the size 58 brown duck-billed cap, which was normally quite roomy, seemed to clamp down on his skull He was not a happy man as he took off the cap, examined the watery beads on the sweatband, and smelled the greasy odor. It was an unfamiliar odor. Slightly nauseating. He reached up to pinch his throat.

The truck slowed as the potholes grew more menacing and made the creaky springs complain eerily. He kept banging his head on the underside of the cab roof. The driver cursed the road, and the people on it; such gutter language spewing from the mouth of a young, and rather pretty, woman created a darkly humorous scene. He couldn’t keep from sneaking furtive looks at her. A pink undershirt poking up above the collar of her blue denim work shirt guarded her fair neck; she had dark eyes with an emerald tinge, and hair that was very short, very coarse, very black, and very glossy. Her white-gloved hands strangled the steering wheel as the truck rocked from side to side to avoid the potholes. When she lurched left, her mouth twisted to the left; when she veered right, it twisted to the right. And while her mouth was twisting this way and that, sweat oozed from her crinkled nose. Her narrow forehead and solid chin told him that she was or had been married – a woman to whom sex was no stranger. Someone he wouldn’t mind getting to know. For a forty-eight-year-old investigator, and an old hand at that, such feelings were ludicrous at the very least. He shook his large head.

Road conditions continued to deteriorate, and they slowed to a caterpillar crawl, finally settling in behind a column of stationary trucks. She took her foot off the gas, turned off the ignition, removed her gloves, and thumped the steering wheel. She gave him an unfriendly look.

‘Good thing there’s no kid in my belly,’ she remarked.

He froze for a moment, then said, somewhat ingratiatingly:

If there had been, you’d have shaken it loose by now.’

1 wouldn’t let that happen, not at two thousand per,’ she replied solemnly.

That said, she stared at him with what might be characterized as a provocative look in her eyes; she appeared to be waiting for a response. Scandalized by this brief and inelegant exchange, Ding Gou’er felt like a budding potato that had rolled into her basket. As the forbidden mysteries of sex were suddenly revealed in her ambiguous and suggestive remark, the distance between them all but vanished. With feelings of annoyance and uncertainty creeping into his heart, he kept a watchful eye on her. Her mouth twisted again, making him very uncomfortable, and he now sensed that she was a guarded, evasive woman, foolish and shallow, certainly no one with whom he had to mince his words.

‘So, are you pregnant?’ he blurted out.

Now that he’d dispensed with conventional small talk, the question hung out there like half-cooked food. But she forced it down her gullet and said almost brazenly:

‘I’ve got a problem, what they call alkaline soil’

Your tasks may be important, but no investigator worthy of the name would allow those tasks to be in conflict with women. In fact, women are a part of one’s tasks.

Reminded of those lines, which were so popular among his colleagues, he felt a lustful thought begin to gnaw at his heart like an insect. Ding Gou’er took a flask from his pocket, removed the plastic stopper, and helped himself to a big drink. Then he handed the flask to the lady trucker.

I’m an agronomist who specializes in soil improvement.’

The lady trucker smacked the horn with the palm of her hand, but was able to coax only a weak, gentle bleat out of it. The driver of the Yellow River big-rig in front of them jumped out of his cab and stared daggers at her from the roadside. Ding Gou’er could feel the anger radiating from the man’s eyes through the gleaming surface of his mirror-lens sunglasses. She snatched the flask out of his hand, sniffed the mouth as if measuring the quality of the contents, then – down the hatch, every last drop. Ding Gou’er was about to compliment her on her capacity for drink, but quickly changed his mind. Praising someone for drinking skills in a place called Liquorland sounded pretty lame, so he swallowed the words. As he wiped his mouth, he stared openly at her thick, moistened lips and, casting decorum to the wind, said:

'I want to kiss you.’

The lady trucker’s face reddened. In a shrill, brassy voice, she roared back:

‘I want to fucking kiss you!’

Left speechless by the response, Ding Gou’er scanned the area around the truck. The driver of the Yellow River big-rig had already climbed back into his cab. A long, snaking line of vehicles stretched ahead, while a canopied truck and a donkey cart had fallen in behind them. The donkey’s broad forehead was decorated with a red tassel. Squat, misshapen trees and weed-infested ditches with an occasional wildflower lined the roadside. Powdery black smudges disfigured the leaves and weeds. Beyond the ditches lay autumnal dry fields, their withered yellow and gray stalks standing ethereally in the shifting winds, looking neither cheery nor sad. It was already mid-morning. A mountain of waste rock pierced the sky ahead, releasing clouds of yellow smoke. A windlass standing at the mine entrance turned leisurely. He could only see part of it; the Yellow River big-rig blocked out the bottom half.

She kept shouting the same sentence over and over, the one that had given Ding Gou’er such a fright, but she didn’t make a move. So Ding Gou’er reached over to touch her breast with the tip of his finger. Without warning she crushed up against him, cupped his chin in the palm of her icy hand, and covered his mouth with hers. Her lips felt cold and mushy, not resilient; freakish, like puffs of cotton waste. That was a turn-off, it killed his desire, and he pushed her away. But, like a plucky fighting cock, she sprang back at him hard, catching him off guard and making resistance all but impossible. He was forced to deal with her the same way he dealt with criminals, try to make her behave.

They sat in the cab gasping for breath, the investigator pinning her arms down to keep her from putting up any resistance. She kept trying to force herself on him, her body twisting like a coil, her back arched like a leaf spring; she grunted from the exertion like an ox caught by the horns. She looked so fetching, Ding Gou’er couldn’t help but laugh.

‘What are you laughing at?’ she demanded.

Ding Gou’er let go of her wrists and removed a business card from his pocket.

I’ll be on my way, young lady. If you miss me, you can find me at this address. Mum’s the word.’

She sized him up, studied the card for a moment, then his face, with the keen intensity of a border guard examining a visitor’s passport.

Ding Gou’er reached out and flicked the lady trucker’s nose with his finger, then tucked his briefcase under his arm and opened the passenger door. ‘So long, girl,’ he said. ‘Remember, I’ve got the right fertilizer for alkaline soil.’ When he was halfway out the door, she grabbed his shirttail.

The look of timidity mixed with curiosity in her eyes now convinced him that she was probably quite young, never married, and unspoiled. Lovable and pitiable at the same time. He rubbed the back of her hand and said with genuine feeling: ‘Girl, you can call me uncle.’

‘You liar,’ she said. ‘You told me you worked at a vehicle control station.’

‘What’s the difference?’ He laughed.

‘You’re a spy!’

‘You might say so.’

‘If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have given you a ride.’

Ding Gou’er took out a pack of cigarettes and tossed it into her lap. ‘Temper, temper.’

She flung his liquor flask into the roadside ditch. ‘Nobody drinks out of something that tiny,’ she remarked.

Ding Gou’er jumped out of the cab, slammed the door shut, and walked off down the road. He heard the lady trucker yell after him:

‘Hey, spy! Know why this road’s in such terrible shape?’ Ding Gou’er turned to see her hanging out the driver’s window; he smiled but didn’t answer.

The image of the lady trucker’s face stuck in the investigator’s head for a moment like dried hops, frothing briefly before vanishing like the foam on a glass of beer. The narrow road twisted and turned like an intestinal tract. Trucks, tractors, horse carts, ox carts… vehicles of every shape and hue, like a column of bizarre beasts, each linked by the tail of the one in front and all jammed up together. The engines had been turned off in some, others were still idling. Pale blue smoke puffed skyward from the tractors’ tin exhaust stacks; the smell of unburned gasoline and diesel oil merged with the stink of ox and horse and donkey breath to form a foul, free-floating miasma. At times he brushed against the vehicles as he shouldered his way past; at other times he had to lean against the squat, misshapen roadside trees. Just about all the drivers were in their cabs drinking. Isn’t there a law against drinking and driving? But these drivers were obviously drinking, so the law must not exist, at least not here. The next time he looked up, he could see two-thirds of the towering iron frame of the windlass at the mouth of the coal mine.

A silver gray steel cable turned noisily on the windlass. In the sunlight, the iron frame was a deep, dark red, either because it was painted or maybe just rusty. A dirty color, a mother-fucking dirty dark red. The huge revolving drum was black, the steel cable turning on it gave off a muted yet terrifying glint. As his eyes took in the colors and radiant light, his ears were assailed by the creaking of the windlass, the moans of the cable, and the dull thuds of underground explosions.

An oval clearing bordered by pagoda-shaped pine trees fronted the mine. It was crowded with vehicles waiting to haul away the coal. A mud-spattered donkey had thrust its mouth up into the needles of a pine tree, either for a snack or to work on an itch. A gang of grubby, soot-covered men in tattered clothes, scarves tied around their heads and hemp ropes cinching up their waists, had squeezed into one of the horse carts, and as the horse ate from its feedbag, they drank from a large purple bottle, passing it around with great enjoyment. Ding Gou’er was not much of a drinker, but he liked to drink, and he could tell the good stuff from the bad. The pungent smell in the air made it obvious that the purple bottle was filled with poor-quality liquor, and from the appearance of the men drinking it, he guessed that they were farmers from the Liquorland countryside.

As he passed in front of the horse, one of the farmers shouted hoarsely, ‘Hey, comrade, what time does that watch of yours say?’

Ding raised his arm, glanced down, and told the fellow what he wanted to know. The farmer, his eyes bloodshot, looked mean and pretty scary. Ding’s heart skipped a beat, he quickened his pace.

From behind him, the farmer cursed, ‘Tell that bunch of free-loading pigs to open up.’

Something in the young farmer’s unhappy, ill-intentioned shout made Ding Gou’er squirm, even though there was no denying it was a reasonable demand. Already a quarter past ten, and the iron gate was still secured with a big, black, tortoise shell of a cast-iron padlock. The faded red letters of five words – Safety First Celebrate May Day – on round steel plates had been welded to the fence. Early autumn sunlight, beautiful and brilliant, baked the area and made everything shine as if new. A gray-brick wall, which stood head high, followed the rises and hollows of the ground, lending it the curves of an elongated dragon. A small secondary gate was latched but unlocked; a wolfish brown dog sprawled lazily, a dragonfly circling round its head.

Ding Gou’er pushed on the small gate, bringing the dog quickly to its feet. Its damp, sweaty nose was but a fraction of an inch from the back of his hand. In fact, it probably touched his hand, since he felt a coolness that reminded him of a purple cuttlefish or a lychee nut. Barking nervously, the dog bounded off, seeking refuge in the shade of the gate house, among some indigo bushes. There the barking grew frenzied.

He raised the latch, pushed open the gate, and stood there for a moment, leaning against the cold metal as he cast a puzzled look at the dog. Then he looked down at his thin, bony hand, with its dark jutting veins, which carried blood that was slightly diluted with the alcohol he had consumed. There were no sparks, no tricks, so what made you run off when I touched you?

A basinful of scalding bath water fanned out in the air above him. A multi-hued waterfall like a rainbow with a dying arc. Soapsuds and sunlight. Hope. A minute after the water ran down his neck, he felt cool all over. A moment later his eyes began to burn and a salty yet sweet taste filled his mouth like a faceful of grime, the non-corporeal essence of wrinkles. For the moment, the special investigator forgot all about the girl in the cab. Forgot the lips like cotton waste. Some time later, he would tense visibly at the sight of a woman holding his business card, sort of like gazing at mountain scenery through a heavy mist. Son of a bitch!

‘Lived long enough, you son of a bitch?’ The gatekeeper, basin in hand, stood there cursing and kicking the ground. Ding Gou’er quickly realized that he was the target of the curses. After shaking some of the water out of his hair and mopping off his neck, he spit out a gob of saliva, blinked several times, and tried to focus on the gatekeeper’s face. He saw a pair of coal-black, shady-looking, dull eyes of different sizes, plus a bulbous nose, bright red like a hawthorn, and a set of obstinate teeth behind dark, discolored lips. Hot flashes wove in and out of his brain, slithering through its runnels. Flames of anger rose in him, as if an internal match had been struck. White-hot embers singed his brain, like cinders in an oven, like lightning bolts. His skull was transparent; waves of courage crashed onto the beach of his chest.

The gatekeeper’s black hair, coarse as a dog’s bristly fur, stood up straight. No doubt about it, the sight of Ding Gou’er had scared the living hell out of him. Ding Gou’er could see the man’s nose hairs, arching upward like swallowtails. An evil, black swallow must be hiding in his head, where it has built a nest, laid its eggs, and raised its hatchlings. Taking aim at the swallow, he pulled the trigger. Pulled the trigger. The trigger.

Pow – pow – pow -.’

Three crisp gunshots shattered the stillness at the gate to the Mount Luo Coal Mine, silenced the big brown dog, and snagged the attention of the farmers. Drivers jumped out of their cabs, needles pricked the donkey’s lips; a moment of frozen indecision, then everyone swarmed to the spot. At ten thirty-five in the morning, the Mount Luo Coal Mine gatekeeper crumpled to the ground before the sounds had even died out. He lay there twitching, holding his head in his hands.

Ding Gou’er, chalky white pistol in his hand, a smile on his lips, stood ramrod stiff, sort of like a pagoda pine. Wisps of green smoke from the muzzle of his pistol dissipated after rising above his head.

People crowded round the metal fence, dumbstruck. Time stood still, until someone shouted shrilly:

‘Help, murder -! Old Lü the gatekeeper’s been shot dead!’

Ding Gou’er. Pagoda pine. Dark green, nearly black.

‘The old dog was an evil bastard.’

‘See if you can sell him to the Gourmet Section of the Culinary Academy.’

‘The old dog’s too tough.’

‘The Gourmet Section only wants tender little boys, not stale goods like him.’

‘Then take him to the zoo to feed to the wolves.’

Ding Gou’er flipped the pistol in the air, where it spun in the sunlight like a silvery mirror. He caught it in his hand and showed it to the people crowding round the gate. It was a splendid little weapon, with the exquisite lines of a fine revolver. He laughed.

‘Friends,’ he said, ‘don’t be alarmed. It’s a toy gun, it isn’t real’

He pushed the release button and the barrel flipped open; he took out a dark red plastic disk and showed it around. A little paper exploding cap lay between each hole in the disk. ‘When you pull the trigger,’ he said, ‘the disk rotates, the hammer hits the cap, and -pow! It’s a toy, good enough to be used as a stage prop, but something you can buy at any department store.’ He reinserted the disk, snapped the barrel back into place, and pulled the trigger.

Pow-!

‘Like so,’ he said, a salesman making his pitch. ‘If you still don’t believe me, look here.’ He aimed the pistol at his own sleeve and pulled the trigger.

Pow-!

‘It’s the traitor Wang Lianju!’ shouted a driver who’d seen the revolutionary opera The Red Lantern.

‘It’s not a real gun.’ Ding Gou’er lifted his arm to show them.

‘You see, if it had been real, my arm would have a hole in it, wouldn’t it?’ His sleeve had a round charred spot, from which the redolent odor of gunpowder rose into the sunlight.

Ding Gou’er stuffed the pistol back into his pocket, walked up, and kicked the gatekeeper who lay on the ground.

‘Get up, you old fake,’ he said. ‘You can stop acting now.’

The gatekeeper climbed to his feet, still holding his head in his hands. His complexion was sallow, the color of a fine year-end cake.

‘I just wanted to scare you.’ he said, ‘not waste a real bullet on you. You can stop hiding behind that dog of yours. It’s after ten o’clock, long past the time you should have opened the gate.’

The gatekeeper lowered his hands and examined them. Then, not sure what to believe, rubbed his head all over and looked at his hands again. No blood. Like a man snatched from the jaws of death, he sighed audibly and, still badly shaken, asked:

‘What, what do you want?’

With a treacherous little laugh, Ding Gou’er said:

I’m the new Mine Director, sent here by municipal authorities.’

The gatekeeper ran over to the gate house and returned with a glistening yellow key, with which he quickly, and noisily, opened the gate. The mob broke for their vehicles, and in no time the clearing rocked with the sound of engines turning over.

A tidal wave of trucks and carts moved slowly, inexorably toward the now open gate, bumping and clanging into each other as they squeezed through. The investigator jumped out of the way, and as he stood there observing the passage of this hideous insect, with its countless twisting, shifting sections, he experienced a strange and powerful rage. The birth of that rage was followed by spasms down around his anus, where irritated blood vessels began to leap painfully, and he knew he was in for a hemorrhoid attack. This time the investigation would go forward, hemorrhoids or no, just like the old days. That thought took the edge off his rage, lessened it considerably, in fact. There’s no avoiding the inevitable. Not mass confusion, and not hemorrhoids. Only the sacred key to a riddle is eternal. But what was the key this time?

The gatekeeper’s face was scrunched up into a ludicrous, unnatural smile. He bowed and he scraped. ‘Won’t our new leader follow me into the reception room?’ Prepared to go with the flow – that was how he lived his life – he followed the man inside.

It was a large, spacious room with a bed under a black quilt. Plus a couple of vacuum bottles. And a great big stove. A pile of coal, each piece as big as a dog’s head. On the wall hung a laughing, pink-skinned, naked toddler with a longevity peach in his hands – a new year’s scroll – his darling little pecker poking up like a pink, wriggly silkworm chrysalis. The whole thing was incredibly lifelike. Ding Gou’er’s heart skipped a beat, his hemorrhoids twitched painfully.

The room was unbearably hot and stuffy from a fire roaring in the stove. The bottom half of the chimney and the surface of the stove had turned bright red from the furious heat. Hot air swirled around the room, making dusty cobwebs in the corners dance. Suddenly he itched all over, his nose ached dreadfully.

The gatekeeper watched his face with smarmy attentiveness.

‘Cold, Director?’

‘Freezing!’ he replied indignantly.

‘No problem, no problem, I’ll just add some coal…’ Muttering anxiously, the gatekeeper reached under the bed and took out a sharp hatchet with a date-red handle. The investigator’s hand flew instinctively to his hip as he watched the man shamble over to the coal bin, hunker down, and pick up a chunk of shiny black coal the size and shape of a pillow; steadying it with one hand, he raised the hatchet over his head and – crack – the coal broke into two pieces of roughly equal size, shining like quicksilver. Crack crack crack crack crack – the pieces kept getting smaller, forming a little pile. He opened the grate and released white-hot flames at least a foot into the air – whoosh. The investigator was sweating from head to toe, but the gatekeeper kept feeding coal into the stove. And kept apologizing: It’ll warm up any minute. The coal here is too soft, burns too fast, got to keep putting in more.’

Ding Gou’er undid his collar button and mopped his sweaty brow with his cap. ‘Why do you have a fire in the stove in September?’

It’s cold, Director, cold…’ The gatekeeper was shivering. ‘Cold… plenty of coal, a whole mountain of the stuff…’

The gatekeeper had a dried-out face, like an overcooked bun. Deciding he’d frightened the man enough, Ding Gou’er confessed that he was not the new Director, and that the man was free to heat the place up as much as he liked, since Ding Gou’er had work to do. The toddler on the wall was laughing, incredibly lifelike. He squinted to get a better look at the darling little boy. Gripping the hatchet firmly in his hand, the gatekeeper said, ‘You impersonated the Mine Director and assaulted me with your pistol Come along, I’m taking you to the Security Section.’ Ding Gou’er smiled and asked, ‘What would you have done if I had been the new Director?’ The gatekeeper slid the hatchet back under the bed and took out a liquor bottle. After removing the cork with his teeth, he took a hefty swig and handed the bottle to Ding Gou’er. A yellow slice of ginseng hung suspended in the liquid, along with seven black scorpions, fangs bared, claws poised. He shook the bottle, and the scorpions swam in the ginseng-enhanced liquid. A strange odor emanated from the bottle. Ding Gou’er brushed the mouth of the bottle with his lips then handed it back to the gatekeeper.

The man eyed Ding Gou’er suspiciously.

‘You don’t want any?’ he asked.

Tm not much of a drinker,’ Ding Gou’er replied.

‘You’re not from around here, I take it?’ the gatekeeper asked.

‘Old-timer, that is one plump, fair-skinned toddler,’ Ding Gou’er said.

He studied the gatekeeper’s face. It was a look of dejection. The man took another hefty swig and muttered softly, ‘What difference does it make if I burn a little coal? A whole ton of the stuff doesn’t cost more than…’

By now Ding Gou’er was so hot he could no longer stand it. Though he found it hard to take his eyes off the toddler, he opened the door and walked out into the sunshine, which was cool and comforting.

Ding Gou’er was born in 1941 and married in 1965. It was a garden variety marriage, with husband and wife getting along well enough, and producing one child, a darling little boy. He had a mistress, who was sometimes adorable and sometimes downright spooky. Sometimes she was like the sun, at other times the moon. Sometimes she was a seductive feline, at other times a mad dog. The idea of divorcing his wife appealed to him, but not enough to actually go through with it. Staying with his mistress was tempting, but not enough to actually do it. Anytime he took sick, he fantasized the onset of cancer, yet was terrified by the thought of the disease; he loved life dearly, and was tired to death of it. He had trouble being decisive. He often stuck the muzzle of his pistol against his temple, then brought it back down; another frequent site for this game was his chest, specifically the area over his heart. One thing and one thing only pleased him without exception or diminution: investigating and solving a criminal case. He was a senior investigator, one of the very best, and well known to high-ranking cadres. He stood about five feet eight, was gaunt, swarthy, and slightly cross-eyed. A heavy smoker, he enjoyed drinking, but got drunk too easily. He had uneven teeth, and wasn’t bad at hand-to-hand combat. His marksmanship was erratic: in a good mood he was a crack shot; otherwise he couldn’t hit the broad side of anything. Somewhat superstitious, he believed in blind luck, and fortune seemed to follow him everywhere.

The Procurator General of the Higher Procuratorate handed him a China-brand cigarette and kept one for himself. Taking out his lighter, Ding lit the Procurator General's cigarette, then his own. The smoke filling his mouth tasted like buttery candy, sweet and delicious. Ding Gou’er noticed how ineptly the Procurator General smoked. He opened a drawer and took out a letter, glanced at it, then handed it over.

Ding Gou’er quickly read the scrawled letter from a whistle-blower. It was signed by someone calling himself Voice of the People. Phony, obviously. The contents shocked him at first; but then came the doubts. He skimmed the letter again, focusing on the marginal notations in the florid script of a senior official who knew him well.

He studied the eyes of the Procurator General, which were fixed on a potted jasmine on the window sill. The dainty white flowers exuded a subtle perfume. ‘Do you think it’s credible?’ he asked. ‘Could they really have the guts to braise and eat infants?’

The Procurator General smiled ambiguously. ‘Secretary Wang wants you to find out.

Excitement swelled in his chest, yet all he said was, ‘This shouldn’t be the business of the Procuratorate. What about the public security bureaus, are they napping?’

It’s not my fault I’ve got the famous Ding Gou’er on my payroll, is it?’

Slightly embarrassed, Ding Gou’er asked, ‘When should I leave?’

‘Whenever you like,’ the Procurator General replied. ‘You divorced yet? Either way it’s just a formality. Needless to say, we all hope there isn’t a word of truth in this accusation. But you are to say nothing about this to anyone. Use any means necessary to carry out your mission, so long as it’s legal’

‘I can go, then?’ Ding Gou’er stood up to leave.

The Procurator General also stood up and slid an unopened carton of China-brand cigarettes across the table.

After picking up the cigarettes and leaving the Procurator General’s office, Ding rode the elevator to the ground floor and left the building, deciding to go first to his son’s school. The renowned Victory Boulevard, with its unending stream of automobiles, blocked his way. So he waited. Across the street to his left a cluster of kindergartners was lined up at the crossing. With the sun in their faces, they looked like a bed of sunflowers. He was drawn to them. Bicycles brushed past, like schooling eels. The riders’ faces were little more than white blurs. The children, dressed in their colorful best, had tender, round faces and smiling eyes. They were tied together by a thick red cord, like a string of fish, or fruit on a spit. Puffy clouds of automobile exhaust settling around them glinted like charcoal in the sunlight and filled the air with their aroma; the children were just like a skewer of roast lamb, basted and seasoned. Children are the nation’s future, her flowers, her treasure. Who would dare run them over? Cars stopped. What else could they do? Engines revved and sputtered as the children crossed the street, a white-uniformed woman at each end of the line. Faces like full moons, encasing cinnabar lips and sharp white teeth, they might as well have been twins. Stretching the cord taut, they brusquely maintained order:

‘Hold on to the cord! Don’t let go!’

As Ding Gou’er stood beneath a roadside tree with yellowed leaves, the children crossed to his side, and waves of cars were already whizzing past. The column began to curve and bend; the children chirped and twittered like a flock of sparrows. Red ribbons around their wrists were fastened to the red cord. No longer standing in a straight line, they were still attached to the cord, and the women only had to draw it taut to straighten them out. Thoughts of the earlier shouts of ‘Hold on to the cord! Don’t let go!’ enraged him. What bullshit! How, he wondered, could they let go, when they’re tied to it?

He leaned against the tree and asked one of the women coldly:

‘Why do you tie them like that?’

She gave him an icy glare.

‘Lunatic!’ she said.

The children looked over at him.

‘Lu-na-tic-!’ they echoed in unison.

The way they drew out the syllables, he couldn’t tell if it was spontaneous or coached. Their lilting, falsetto voices rose like birds on the wing. Smiling idiotically, he nodded an apology to the woman on the far end, who dismissed him by looking away. He followed the column of children with his eyes until they disappeared down a lane bordered by a pair of high red walls.

It was a struggle, but he finally made it to the other side of the street, where a Xinjiang vendor roasting skewers of lamb hailed him in a heavy accent. He wasn’t tempted. But a long-necked girl walked up and bought ten. Reddened lips like chili peppers. Dipping the skewers of sizzling, greasy meat into the pepper jar, she bared her teeth as she ate, to protect her lipstick. His throat burning, he turned and walked off.

A while later he was in front of the elementary school smoking a cigarette and waiting for his son, who didn’t see him as he ran out the gate with his backpack. He had blue ink smudges on his face, the marks of a student. He called his son’s name. When the boy reluctantly fell in behind him, he told him he was being sent to Liquorland on business. ‘So what?’ Ding Gou’er asked his son what he meant by So What? ‘So what? means So what? What do you expect me to say?’

“So what? That’s right. So what?’ he said, echoing his son’s comment.

Ding Gou’er walked into the mine’s Party Committee Security Section, where he was greeted by a crewcut young man who opened a floor-to-ceiling cabinet, poured a glass of liquor, and handed it to him. This room too was furnished with a large stove, which kept the temperature way up there, if not as stifling as the gate house. Ding Gou’er asked for some ice; the young fellow urged him to try the liquor:

‘Drink some, it’ll warm you up.’

The earnest look made it impossible for Ding Gou’er to refuse, so he accepted the glass and drank slowly.

The office was hermetically sealed by perfectly dovetailed doors and windows. Once again Ding Gou’er started to itch all over, and rivulets of sweat ran down his face. He heard Crewcut say consolingly:

‘Don’t worry, you’ll cool off as you calm down.’

A buzzing filled Ding Gou’er’s ears. Bees and honey, he was thinking, and honeyed infants. This mission was too important to be undone by carelessness. The glass in the windows seemed to vibrate. In the space between heaven and earth outside the room, large rigs moved slowly and noiselessly. He felt as if he were in an aquarium, like a pet fish. The mining rigs were painted yellow, a numbing color, an intoxicating color. He strained to hear the noise they made, but no dice.

Ding Gou’er heard himself say:

‘I want to see your Mine Director and Party Secretary.’

Crewcut said:

‘Drink up, drink up.’

Touched by Crewcut’s enthusiasm, Ding Gou’er leaned back and drained the glass.

He no sooner set down his glass than Crewcut filled it up again.

‘No more for me,’ he said. ‘Take me to see the Mine Director and Party Secretary.’

‘What’s your hurry, Boss? One more glass and we’ll go. I’d be guilty of dereliction of duty if you didn’t. Happy events call for double. Go on, drink up.’

The sight of the full glass nearly unnerved Ding Gou’er, but he had a job to do, so he picked it up and drank it down.

He put down the glass, and it was immediately refilled.

It’s mine policy,’ Crewcut said. If you don’t drink three, how edgy you will be.’

I’m not much of a drinker,’ Ding Gou’er protested.

Crewcut picked up the glass with both hands and raised it to Ding Gou’er’s lips.

‘I beg you,’ he said tearfully, ‘Drink it. You don’t want me to be edgy, do you?’

Ding Gou’er saw such genuine feeling in Crewcut’s face that his heart skipped a beat, then softened; he took the glass and poured the liquor down his throat.

‘Thank you,’ Crewcut said gratefully, ‘thank you. Now, how about three more?’

Ding Gou’er clamped his hand over the glass. ‘No more for me, that’s it,’ he said. ‘Now take me to your leaders.’

Crewcut looked at his wristwatch.

It’s a bit early to be going to see them now,’ he said.

Ding Gou’er whipped out his ID card. I’m here on important business,’ he said truculently, ‘so don’t try to stop me.’

Crewcut hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Let’s go.’

Ding followed Crewcut out of the Security Section office and down a corridor lined with doors, beside which wooden name-plaques hung.

‘The offices of the Party Secretary and Mine Director aren’t in this building, I take it,’ he said.

‘Just come with me,’ Crewcut said. ‘You drank three glasses for me, so you don’t have to worry that I’ll lead you astray. If you hadn’t drunk those three glasses, I’d have taken you to the Party Secretary’s office and simply handed you over to his appointments secretary.’

As they walked out of the building, he saw his face reflected dimly in the glass door and was shocked by the haggard, unfamiliar expression staring back at him. The hinges creaked when the door was opened, then sprang back and bumped him so hard on his backside that he stumbled forward. Crewcut reached out to steady him. The sunbeams were dizzyingly bright. His legs went wobbly, his hemorrhoids throbbed, his ears buzzed.

‘Am I drunk?’ he asked Crewcut.

‘You’re not drunk, Boss,’ Crewcut replied. ‘How could a superior individual like you be drunk? People around here who get drunk are the dregs of society, illiterates, uncouth people. Highbrow folks, those of the “spring snow,” cannot get drunk. You’re a highbrow, therefore, you cannot be drunk.’

This impeccable logic completely won over Ding Gou’er, who tagged along behind the man as they passed through a clearing strewn with wooden logs. A bit bewildering, given the range of sizes. The thick logs were a couple of meters in diameter, the thin ones no more than two inches. Pine, birch, three kinds of oak, and some he couldn’t name. Possessed of scant botanical knowledge, he was happy to have recognized those few. The gouged, scarred logs reeked of alcohol. Weeds that were already beginning to wither had sprouted between and among the logs. A white moth fluttered lazily in the air. Black swallows soared overhead, looking slightly tipsy. He tried to wrap his arms around an old oak log, but it was too thick. When he thumped the dark red growth rings with his fist, liquid oozed out over his hand. He sighed.

⁴What a magnificent tree this was at one time!’ he remarked.

‘Last year a self-employed winemaker offered three thousand for it, but we wouldn’t sell,’ Crewcut volunteered.

‘What did he want it for?’

‘Wine casks,’ Crewcut answered. ‘You must use oak for high quality wine.’

‘You should have sold it to him. It isn’t worth anywhere near three thousand.’

‘We do not approve of self-employment. We’d let it rot before we’d support an entrepreneurial economy.’

While Ding Gou’er was secretly applauding the Mount Luo Coal Mine’s keen awareness of the public ownership system, a couple of dogs were chasing each other around the logs, slipping and sliding as if slightly mad, or drunk. The larger one looked a little like the gate-house dog, but not too much. They scampered around one stack of logs, then another, as if trying to enter a primeval forest. Fresh mushrooms grew in profusion in the plentiful shade of the huge fallen oak, layers of oak leaves and peeled bark exuded the captivating smell of fermented acorn sap. On one of the logs, a mottled old giant, grew hundreds of fruits shaped like little babies: pink in color, facial features all in the right places, fair, gently wrinkled skin. And all of them boys, surprisingly, with darling little peckers all red and about the size of peanuts. Ding Gou’er shook his head to clear away the cobwebs; mysterious, spooky, devilish shadows flickered inside his head and spread outward. He reproached himself for wasting so much time at a place where he had no business spending any time at all. But then he had second thoughts. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I started this case, he was thinking, and I’ve already found a path through the maze – that’s damned efficient. His patience restored, he fell in behind the crewcut young man. Let’s see where he plans to take me.

Passing by a stack of birchwood logs, he saw a forest of sunflowers. All those blossoms gazing up at the sun formed a patch of gold resting atop a dark-green, downy base. As he breathed in the unique, sweet, and intoxicating aroma of birch, his heart was filled with scenes of autumn hills. The snow-white birch bark clung to life, still moist, still fresh. Where the bark had split open, even fresher, even more tender flesh peeked through, as if to prove that the log was still growing. A lavender cricket crouched atop the birch bark, daring someone to come catch it. Unable to contain his excitement, the crewcut young man announced:

‘See that row of red-tiled buildings there in the sunflower forest? That’s where you’ll find our Party Secretary and Mine Director.’

There looked to be about a dozen buildings with red roof tiles nestled amid the contrasting greens and golds in the forest of thick-stemmed, broad-leafed sunflowers, which were nourished by fertile, marshy soil. Under the bright rays of sunlight, the yellow was extraordinarily brilliant. And as Ding Gou’er took in the exquisite scenery, a giddy feeling bordering on intoxication spread throughout his body – gentle, sluggish, heavy. He shook off the giddiness, but by then Crewcut had vanished into thin air. Ding jumped up onto a stack of birchwood logs for a better vantage point, and had the immediate sensation of riding the waves – for the birchwood stack was a ship sailing on a restless ocean. Off in the distance, the mountain of waste rock still smoldered, although the smoke had given up much of the moisture it had carried at dawn. Undulating black men swarmed over the exposed mounds of coal, beneath which vehicles jostled for position. Human shouts and animal noises were so feeble that he thought something had gone wrong with his hearing; he was cut off from the material world by a transparent barrier. The apricot-colored rigs stretched their long limbs into the opening of the coal pit, their movements excruciatingly slow yet unerringly precise. Suddenly dizzy, he bent over and lay face-down on one of the birchwood logs. It was still being tossed by the waves. Crewcut had indeed vanished into thin air. Ding slid down off the birchwood log and walked toward the sunflower forest.

He could not help thinking about his recent behavior. A special investigator, highly regarded by the country’s senior leaders, crouching on a pile of birchwood logs like a puppy too scared of the water to appreciate its surroundings; this behavior had already become a factor in his investigation of a case that would become an international scandal if the accusations proved to be true. So spectacular that if it were made into a movie, people would scoff. He supposed he was a bit drunk, but that didn’t alter the fact that Crewcut was a sneak, and not altogether normal, no, decidedly not normal. The investigator’s imagination began to soar, wings and feathers carried on gusts of wind. The crewcut young man is probably a member of the gang of people who eat infants, and was already planning his escape while he was leading me through the maze of logs. The path he chose was Ml of traps and dangers. But he had underestimated the intelligence of Ding Gou’er.

Ding clasped his briefcase to his chest, for in it, heavy and steely hard, was a Chinese six-nine repeater. Pistol in hand, he was bold, he was brave. Reluctantly he took a last look at the birchwood and oak logs, his colorful comrade logs. The cross-sectioned patterns turned them into targets, and as he fantasized hitting a bull’s-eye, his legs carried him to the edge of the sunflower forest.

That a quiet, secluded place like this could exist in the midst of seething coal mines reminded him of the power of human endeavor. The sunflowers turned their smiling faces to greet him. He saw hypocrisy and treachery in those emerald green and pale yellow smiles. He heard cold laughter, very soft, as the wind set the broad leaves dancing and rustling. Reaching into his briefcase to feel his cold, hard companion, he strode purposefully toward the red buildings, head held high. With his eyes fixed on the red buildings, he felt a palpable threat from the surrounding sunflowers. It was in their coldness and the white burrs.

Ding Gou’er opened the door and walked in. It had been quite a journey, filled with a range of experiences, but finally he was in the presence of the Party Secretary and the Mine Director. The two dignitaries were about fifty, and had round, puffy faces like wheels of baked bread; their skin was ruddy, about the color of thousand-year eggs; and each had a bit of a general’s paunch. They wore gray tunics with razor-sharp seams. Their smiles were kindly, magnanimous, like most men of high rank. And they could have been twins. Grasping Ding Gou’er’s hand, they shook it with gusto. They were practiced hand-shakers: not too loose, not too tight; not too soft, not too hard. Ding Gou’er felt a warm current surge through his body with each handshake, as if his hands had closed around nice pulpy yams straight from the oven. His briefcase fell to the floor. A gunshot tore from within.

Pow-!

The briefcase was smoking; a brick in the wall crumbled. Ding Gou’er’s shock manifested itself in hemorrhoidal spasms. He actually saw the bullet shatter a glass mosaic painting on the wall; the theme was Natha Raises Havoc at Sea. The artist had fashioned the heavenly Natha as a plump, tender little baby boy, and the investigator’s accidental firing had mangled Natha’s little pecker.

“A crack shot if I ever saw one!’

‘The bird that sticks out its head gets shot!’

Ding Gou’er was mortified. Scooping up his briefcase, he took out the pistol, and flipped on the safety.

‘I could have sworn the safety was on,’ he said.

‘Even a thoroughbred stumbles sometimes.’

‘Guns go off all the time.’

The magnanimity and consoling words from the Mine Director and Party Secretary only increased his embarrassment; the high spirits with which he had stormed through the door vanished like misty clouds. Cringing and bowing low, he fumbled with his ID card and letter of introduction.

‘You must be Comrade Ding Gou’er!’

‘We’re delighted you’ve come to assess our work!’

Too embarrassed to ask how they knew he was coming. Ding Gou’er merely rubbed his nose.

‘Comrade Director,’ he said, ‘and Comrade Party Secretary, I've come on the orders of a certain high-ranking comrade to investigate reports that infants are being braised and eaten at your esteemed mine. This case has far-reaching implications, and strictest secrecy must be maintained.’

The Mine Director and Party Secretary exchanged a long look – ten seconds at least – before clapping their hands and laughing uproariously.

Ding Gou’er frowned and said reproachfully:

‘I must ask you to take this seriously. Liquorland’s Deputy Head of Propaganda, Diamond Jin, who is a prime suspect, comes from your esteemed mine.’

One of them, either the Mine Director or the Party Secretary, said:

‘That’s right, Deputy Head Jin was a teacher at the elementary school attached to the mine. But he’s a talented and principled comrade, one in a million.’

‘I’d like you to fill me in.’

‘We can talk while we enjoy some food and drink.’

Before he could open his mouth to protest, he was bundled into the dining room.

II

My Dear, Esteemed Mo Yan

Greetings!

I am a Ph.D. candidate in liquor studies at the Brewer’s College here in Liquorland. My name is Li, Li Yidou -One-Pint Li – but of course that’s only a nom de plume. You’ll forgive me for not revealing my real name. You are a world famous writer (that’s not flattery), so you’ll have no trouble figuring out why I chose that particular pseudonym. My body may be in Liquorland, but my heart is in literature, splashing away in the sea of literature. Which is why my academic adviser, who is my wife’s father, the husband of my mother-in-law, thus my father-in-law – in elitist terms, lord of the castle, more commonly, ‘the man’ – Yuan Shuangyu, Professor Yuan, is always criticizing me for ignoring my true career, and why he has even tried to goad his daughter into divorcing me. But I shall not be deterred. For the sake of literature, I would willingly climb a mountain of knives or rush into a sea of flames. ‘For thou I shalt waste away, happy that the clothes hang loose on my body.’ My retort to him is always the same: What exactly is ignoring one’s true career? Tolstoy was a military man, Gorki a baker and a dishwasher, Guo Moruo a medical student, and Wang Meng the Deputy Party Secretary of the Beijing branch of the Youth League in China’s new democracy. They all changed careers and became writers, didn’t they? When my father-in-law tried to counter my arguments, I just glared at him, like the legendary eccentric, Ruan Ji, except that I lacked the power of my illustrious predecessor and was unable to mask completely the white-hot anger in my black eyes. Lu Xun couldn’t do it either, right? But you know all this already, so why am I trying to impress you? This is like reciting the Three Character Classic at the door of Confucius, or engaging in swordplay in front of the warrior Guan Yu, or boasting about drinking to Diamond Jin… but I stray from my purpose in writing.

My dear, esteemed Mo Yan, I have read with great enjoyment everything you’ve written, and I bow low in respect for you. One of my souls leaves the mortal world, one flies straight to Nirvana. Your work is on a par with Guo Moruo’s ‘Phoenix Nirvana’ and Gorki’s My Universities. What I admire most about you is your spirit, like that of the ‘Wine God,’ who drinks as much as he wants without getting drunk. I read an essay in which you wrote, ‘liquor is literature’ and ‘people who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature.’ Those refreshing words filled my head with the clarified butter of great wisdom, removed all obstacles to understanding. Truly it was a case of: ‘Open the gates of the throat and pour down a bucket of Maotall. There cannot be a hundred people in this world who are more knowledgeable about liquor than L You, of course, count among them. The history of liquor and the distillation of liquor, the classification of liquor, the chemistry of liquor, and the physical properties of liquor, I know them all like the back of my hand. Which is why I am so captivated by literature, and why I believe I am capable of producing good literature. Your judgment would be my liquor of assurance, serving the same purpose as that glass of liquor the martyred hero Li Yuhe took from Aunt Li just before he was arrested. So, Mo Yan, Sir, now you must know why I am writing this letter. Please accept the prostration of your disciple!

Recently I saw the film adaptation of your novel Red Sorghum, which you also worked on, and was so excited I could hardly sleep that night. So I drank, one glass after another. I was so happy for you. Sir, and so proud. Mo Yan, you are the pride of Liquorland! I shall appeal to people from all walks of life to pluck you from Northeast Gaomi township and settle you here in Liquorland. Wait for news from me.

I mustn’t carry on too long in this first letter. I include with it a short story for your criticism. I wrote it like a man possessed the night I saw your movie Red Sorghum, after tossing and turning, and finally drinking the night away. If you think it has promise, I would be grateful if you would recommend it for publication somewhere. I salute you with enormous respect, and wish you

Continued success,

Your disciple

Li Yidou

PS: Please let me know if you are short of liquor. I will attend to it right away.

III

Dear Doctor of Liquor Studies

Greetings!

Your letter and the story ‘Alcohol’ both arrived safely.

I am a haphazardly educated person, which is why I hold college students in such high regard. And a Ph.D. candidate, well, that is the apex.

During times like this, it is fair to say that literature is not the choice of the wise, and those of us for whom it is too late can but sigh at a lack of talent and skills that leaves us only with literature. A writer by the name of Li Qi once wrote a novel entitled Don’t Treat Me Like a Dog, in which he describes a gang of local punks who are deprived of opportunities to cheat or mug or steal or rob, so one of them says: Let’s go become goddamned writers! Yd rather not go into detail regarding the implications. If you’re interested, you can find a copy of the novel for yourself.

You are a doctoral candidate in liquor studies. I envy you more than is probably good for me. If I were a doctor of liquor studies, I doubt that I’d waste my time writing novels. In China, which reeks of liquor, can there be any endeavor with greater promise or a brighter future than the study of liquor, any field that bestows more abundant benefits? In the past, it was said that In books there are castles of gold, in books there are casks of grain, in books there are beautiful women.’ But the almanacs of old had their shortcomings, and the word liquor’ would have worked better than ‘books.’ Take a look at Diamond Jin, that is, Deputy Head Jin, the one with the oceanic capacity for liquor, a man who has earned the undying respect of everyone in Liquorland. Where will you find a writer whose name can be uttered in the same breath as his? And so, little brother (Fm unworthy of being called ‘sir’), I urge you to listen to your father-in-law and avoid taking the wrong path.

In your letter you said that one of my essays inspired you to become a writer. That is a big mistake. I wrote the asinine words liquor is literature’ and ‘people who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature’ when I was good and drunk, and you must not take them to heart. If you do, this insignificant life of mine will be all but over.

I have read your manuscript carefully. I have no grounding in literary theory and hardly any ability to appreciate art. Any song and dance from me would be pointless. But I have mailed it off to the editors at Citizens’ Literature, where the finest contemporary editors have gathered. If you are a true ‘thousand-li steed,’ I am confident there’s a master groom out there somewhere for you. I have plenty of liquor, but thanks for asking.

Wishing you

Health and happiness,

Mo Yan

IV

Alcohol, by Li Yidou

Dear friends, dear students, when I learned that I had been engaged as a visiting professor at the Brewer’s College, this supreme honor was like a warm spring breeze in midwinter sweeping past my loyal, red-blooded heart, my green lungs and intestines, as well as my purple liver, the seat of acquiescence and accommodation. I can stand behind this sacred podium, made of pine and cypress and decorated with colorful plastic flowers, to lecture to you primarily because of its special qualities. You all know that when alcohol enters the body, most of it is broken down in the liver… Diamond Jin stood at the podium in the General Education Lecture Hall of Liquorland’s Brewer’s College solemnly discharging his duties. He had chosen a broad and far-reaching topic for this, his first lecture – Liquor and Society. In the tradition of brilliant, high-ranking leaders, who steer clear of specifics when they speak in public – like God looking down from on high, invoking times ancient and modern, calling forth heaven and earth, a sweeping passage through time and space – he proved his worth as visiting professor by not allowing the details of the topic to monopolize his oration. He permitted himself to soar through the sky like a heavenly steed, yet from time to time knew he must come down to earth. The rhetoric flowed from his mouth, changing course at will, yet every sentence was anchored in his topic, directly or indirectly.

Nine hundred Liquorland college students, male and female, heads swelling, hearts and minds ready to take flight, along with their professors, instructors, teaching assistants, and college administrators, sat as one body, a galaxy of celestial small-fry gazing up at a luminous star. It was a sunshiny spring morning, and Diamond Jin stood behind a tall podium gazing out at his audience with diamond-clear eyes. Professor Yuan Shuangyu, who was well past sixty, sat in the audience, looking up at the stage, his white hair seeming to float above his head, the picture of elegance. Each strand of hair was like a silver thread, his cheeks were ruddy, his composure grand; like an enlightened Taoist, he was a man who embodied the spirit of a drifting cloud or a wild crane. His silvery head towering over all those others had the effect of a camel amid a herd of sheep. The elderly gentleman was my academic adviser. I knew him, and I knew his wife, and later on I fell in love with his daughter, and I married her, which meant that he and his wife became my in-laws. I was in the audience that day, a Ph.D. candidate majoring in liquor studies at the Brewer’s College, and my academic adviser was my own father-in-law. Alcohol is my spirit, my soul, and it is also the title of this story. Writing fiction is a hobby for me, so I am free of the pressures of a professional writer; I can let my pen go where it wants, I can get drunk while I write. Good liquor! That’s right, really really good liquor! Good liquor good liquor, good liquor emerges from my hand. If you drink my good liquor, you can eat like a fat sow, without looking up once. I set my liquor-filled glass down on a lacquered tray with a crisp clink, and when I close my eyes I can see that lecture hall now. The laboratory. All that lovely liquor in the Blending Laboratory, each glass beaker filled with a different red on the scale; the lights singing, the wine surging through my veins, in the flow of time my thoughts travel upstream, and Diamond Jin’s small, narrow, yet richly expressive face has a seductive appeal. He is the pride and glory of Liquorland, an object of reverence among the students. They want their future sons to be like Diamond Jin, the women want their future husbands to be like Diamond Jin. A banquet is not a banquet without liquor; Liquorland would not be Liquorland without Diamond Jin. He drank down a large glass of liquor, then dried his moist, silky lips with a silk handkerchief that reeked of gentility. Wan Guohua, the flower of the Distilling Department, dressed in the most beautiful dress the world has ever seen, refilled our visiting professor’s glass with liquor, her every motion a study in grace. She blushed under his affectionate gaze; we might even say that red clouds of joy settled on her cheeks. I know that pangs of jealousy struck some of the girls in the audience, while for others it was simple envy, and for yet others tooth-gnashing anger. He had a booming voice that emerged unobstructed from deep down in his throat, which he never had to clear before speaking. His coughs were the minor flaws of which only prominent people can boast, a simple habit that did nothing to lessen his refined image. He said:

Dear comrades and dear students, do not have blind faith in talent, for talent is really nothing but hard work. Of course, materialists do not categorically deny that some people are more lavishly endowed than others. But this is not an absolute determinant. I acknowledge that I possess a superior natural ability to break down alcohol, but were it not for arduous practice, attention to technique, and artistry, the splendid ability to drink as much as I want without getting drunk would have been unattainable.

You are very modest, but then, individuals with true abilities generally are. People who boast of their talents tend not to have natural talents, or have very few of them. With consummate grace you drank down another glass of liquor. The young lady from Distilling gracefully refilled your glass. I refilled my own glass with a tired hand. People exchanged knowing smiles as greetings. Liquor was the Tang poet Li Bai’s muse. But Li Bai is no match for me, for he had to pay for his liquor, and I don’t. I can drink laboratory brews. Li Bai was a literary master, while I am but an amateur scribbler. The Vice-Chairman of the Metropolitan Writers Association urged me to write about aspects of life with which I am familiar. I frequently take some of the liquor I steal from the laboratory to his house. He wouldn’t lie to me. How far have you gotten in your lecture? Let us prick up our ears and concentrate our energy. The college students were like nine hundred feisty little donkeys.

Little donkeys. The expression on the face of Professor Diamond Jin, our Deputy Head, and his gestures, differ hardly at all from the little donkeys’. He looks so lovable up there behind the rostrum, hands flying, body twisting. He was saying, My relationship with liquor goes back forty years. Forty years ago, the founding of our People’s Republic, such a joyous month for us all, a time when I was just taking root in my mother’s womb. Prior to that, according to my findings, my parents were no different than anyone else -frenzied to the point of folly, and all pleasures that followed sank into a state of wild ecstasy, as exaggerated as if flowers had fallen from heaven. So I am a product, or maybe a byproduct, of ecstasy. Students, we all know the relationship between ecstasy and liquor. It matters not if carnivals coincide with celebrations of the wine god, and it matters not if Nietzsche was born on the festival of the wine god. What matters is that the union of my father’s ecstasy sperm and my mother’s ecstasy egg predetermined my long association with liquor. He unfolded a slip of paper handed up to him and read it. I am an ideological worker for the party, he announced with tolerance and magnanimity, so how could I be a spokesman for idealism? I am a materialist, through and through. I will always and forever hold high the banner of Material goods first, spiritual concerns second,’ the words embroidered in golden threads. Even though it is a result of ecstasy, sperm is material; so, using this logic, is not the egg of ecstasy material as well? Or, from a different angle: Is it possible for people in a state of ecstasy to abandon their own flesh and bone and be transformed into purely spiritual beings flying off in all directions? And so, my dear students, time is precious, time is money, time is life itself, and we must not let this simplest of issues have us running around in circles. At noon today I am going to open the first annual Ape Liquor Festival for benefactors, including Chinese-Americans and our brethren from Hong Kong and Macao. They deserve the best.

From where I was standing at the rear of the hall, I saw the deltoid muscles below the neck of my mother-in-law’s husband grow taut and turn red when Diamond Jin mentioned the words Ape Liquor. The old fellow had been salivating for most of his adult life over thoughts of the supremely wondrous liquor of this legend. For the two million inhabitants of Liquorland, turning the legend of Ape Liquor into a container of liquid fact would be a dream come true; a task force had been formed, with extraordinary funding from the municipal coffers. The old fellow had headed up the task force, so whose deltoids would tense up, if not his? I couldn’t see his face. But I believe I know what it looked like at that moment.

Dear students, let the following sacred image take form before our eyes: A school of ecstatic sperm, lithe tails flapping behind them, like an army of bold warriors storming a fortress. Oh, they may be wildly ecstatic, but their movements are sprightly yet gentle. The Fascist ringleader Hitler wanted the youth of Germany to be quick and nimble as ferocious hunting dogs, tough and pliable as leather, and hard and unyielding as Krupp steel. Now even though Hitler’s idealized German youth may be somewhat analogous to the school of sperm wriggling before our eyes – one of which is my very own nucleus – no metaphor, no matter how apt, is worthy of being repeated, especially when the creator of that metaphor was among the most evil men who ever walked the face of the earth. Better that we use domestic clichés than the best the foreigners have to offer. It’s a matter of principle, nothing to take for granted. Comrade leaders at all levels, take heed, do not be slapdash in this regard, not ever. In medical books sperm cells are described as tadpoles, so let’s set those tadpoles a-swimming. A cloud of tadpoles, one carrying my origins with them, swims upstream in my mother’s warm currents. It is a race. The winner’s trophy is a juicy, tender white grape. Sometimes, of course, there is a dead heat between two of the competitors. In cases like this, if there are two white grapes, each competitor is awarded one; but if there is only one white grape, then they must share the sweet nectar. But what if three, or four, or even more competitors arrive at the finish line at the same time? This is a unique case, a particularly rare occurrence, and scientific principles are abstracted from general conditions, not unique cases, which require special debate. At any rate, in this particular race I reached the finish line ahead of all the others, and was swallowed up by the white grape, becoming part of it and letting it become part of me. That’s right, the most vivid metaphor imaginable is still inferior – Lenin said that. Without metaphor there can be no literature – that’s Tolstoy. We frequently use liquor as a metaphor for a beautiful woman, and people often use a beautiful woman as a metaphor for liquor; by so doing, we show that liquor and a beautiful woman share common properties, but are individuated by distinctive properties within those common properties, and that the common properties within the distinctive properties are what deindividuate a beautiful woman and liquor. Seldom does one gain true understanding of the tenderness of a beautiful woman by drinking liquor – that is as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. By the same token, it is difficult for one to gain a true understanding of the qualities of liquor via the tenderness of a beautiful woman – that is as rare as unicorn horns and phoenix feathers.

His oration that day had us dumbstruck, we shallow college students and slightly less shallow graduate students. He had consumed more liquor than we had drunk water. Genuine knowledge comes from practice, my dear students. A marksman feeds on bullets; a drinking star is steeped in alcohol There are no shortcuts on the road to success, and only those fearless people who have the courage to keep climbing on a rugged mountain path have any hope of reaching the glorious summit!

Truth’s glory shone down upon us, and we responded with thunderous applause.

Students, I had a miserable childhood. Great people struggle their way out of the seas of misery, and he was no exception. I yearned for liquor, but there was none. Deputy Head Jin related to us how, under highly adverse circumstances, he substituted industrial alcohol for sorghum liquor in order to toughen his internal organs, and I want to use pure literature to portray this extraordinary experience. I took a drink and clinked my glass down on the lacquer tray. It was getting dark, and Diamond Jin stood somewhere between Deputy Head and ecstatic sperm. He waved to me. He was wearing a tattered lined jacket as he led me to his hometown.

A cold winter night, a crescent moon and a skyful of stars illuminated the streets and the houses, the dry, withered branches and leaves of willow trees, and the plum blossoms of Diamond Jin’s village. Not long after a recent heavy snowfall, the sun had come out twice, melting the snow and forming icicles that hung from eaves and gave off a faint glow of their own under the natural light from above; the accumulated snow on rooftops and tips of branches glowed as well. Based upon Deputy Head Jin’s description, it was not a particularly windy winter night, as the ice on the river cracked and split under the onslaught of the astonishing cold. The cracks sounded like explosions in the late night air. Then the night grew quieter and quieter. The village was fast asleep, that village in our Liquorland suburbs, and one day we may very well take a ride in Deputy Head Jin’s VW Santana to admire the sacred spots and visit the sites of relics; every mountain, every river and lake, every blade of grass, and every tree can only increase our reverence for Deputy Head Jin; and what intimate feelings they will be! Just think, born in an impoverished, ramshackle village, he climbed slowly into the sky until he shone down over all of Liquorland, a resplendent star of liquor, his radiance dazzling our eyes and filling them with tears, causing an upsurge of emotions. A broken-down cradle is still a cradle, nothing can replace it, and every indication points to the likelihood that a limitless future stretches out ahead of Deputy Head Jin. When we follow in the footsteps of Diamond Jin, who has entered the top ranks of leadership, wandering through the streets and byways of his Diamond Village, when we linger on the edges of his murmuring streams, when we stroll along the high, tree-lined banks of the rivers, when we amble past his cattle pens and stables… when the sorrows and ecstasies of his childhood, his loves and his dreams… ad nauseam flood his heart like floating clouds and flowing water, how can we gauge his state of mind? How does he walk? What is his expression like? When he walks, does he start with his left foot or his right? What is his left arm doing when he strides forward with his right foot? What about his right arm when he strides with his left foot? How does his breath smell? What’s his blood pressure? His heart rate? Do his teeth show when he smiles? Does his nose crinkle when he weeps? So much cries out to be described, and there are so few words in my lexicon. I can only raise my glass. Out in the yard, snow-laden dead branches cracked and splintered; ice on a distant pond was three inches thick; dried-out ice covered clumps of reeds; geese, wild and domestic, roosting for the night were startled out of their dreams and honked crisply, the sound carrying through the clean, chilled air all the way to the eastern room of the home of Diamond Jin’s seventh uncle. He says he went to his seventh uncle’s house every evening, and stayed till late at night. The walls were jet-black; a kerosene lamp stood atop an old three-drawer table against the east wall. Seventh Aunt and Seventh Uncle sat on the brick bed platform; the little stove repairman, Big Man Liu, Fang Nine, and storekeeper Zhang all sat on the edge of the platform killing time through the long night, just like me. Every night they came; not even stormy weather could keep them away. They reported on what they’d done that day and passed on news they’d picked up in villages and hamlets in rich, vivid detail, full of wit and humor, painting a vast canvas of village life and customs. A life rich with literary appeal The cold was like a wildcat that crept in through cracks and gnawed at my feet. He was just a child who couldn’t afford a pair of socks, and had to curl his blackened, chapped feet in woven-rush sandals, icy drops of sweat coating his soles and the spaces between his toes. The kerosene lamp seemed to blaze in the dark room, making the white paper over the window sparkle, the freezing air streaming in through its rips and tears; sooty smoke from the kerosene flame wisped toward the ceiling in neat coils. Seventh Aunt and Seventh Uncle’s two children were asleep in a corner of the brick bed; the girl’s breathing was even, the boy’s was labored, high one moment, low the next, mingled with nightmare babble that sounded like a dream brawl with a gang of ruffians. Seventh Aunt, a bright-eyed, educated woman with a nervous stomach was hiccuping audibly. Seventh Uncle gave every appearance of being a muddle-headed man whose nondescript face had no distinctive curves or angles, like a slab of gooey rice-cake. His clouded eyes were forever fixed dully on the lighted lamp. Actually, Seventh Uncle was a shrewd man who had schemed and plotted to trick the educated Seventh Aunt, ten years his junior, into marrying him; it was a convoluted campaign that would take far too long to recount here. Seventh Uncle was an amateur veterinarian who could puncture a vein in a sow’s ear and inject penicillin intravenously, and who also knew how to castrate hogs, dogs, and donkeys. Like all men in the village, he liked to drink, but now the bottles were empty; all the fermentable grains had been used up, and food had become their biggest concern. He said, We suffered through the long winter nights with growling stomachs, and at the time no one dreamed that I’d ever make it to this day. I don’t deny that my nose is keenly sensitive where alcohol is concerned, especially in rural villages where the air is unpolluted. On cold nights in rural villages, threads of a variety of smells come through clear and distinct, and if someone is drinking liquor anywhere within a radius of several hundred meters, I can smell it.

As the night deepened, I detected the aroma of liquor off to the northeast, an intimate, seductive smell, even though there was a wall between it and me, and it had to soar across one snow-covered roof after another, pierce the armor of ice-clad trees, and pass down roads, intoxicating chickens, ducks, geese, and dogs along the way. The barking of those dogs was rounded like liquor bottles, exuberantly drunk; the aroma intoxicated constellations, which winked happily and swayed in the sky, like little urchins on swings; intoxicated fish in the river hid among lithe water weeds and spat out sticky, richly mellow air bubbles. To be sure, birds braving the cold night air drank in the aroma of liquor as they flew overhead, including two densely feathered owls, and even some field voles chomping grass in their underground dens. On this spot of land, full of life in spite of the cold, many sentient beings shared in the enjoyment of man’s contribution, and sacred feelings were thus born. ‘The popularity of liquor begins with the sage kings, though some say Yi Di, and others Du Kang.’ Liquor flows among the gods. Why do we offer it as a sacrifice to our ancestors and to release the imprisoned souls of the dead? That night I understood. It was the moment of my initiation. On that night a spirit sleeping within me awakened, and I was in touch with a mystery of the universe, one that transcends the power of words to describe, beautiful and gentle, tender and kind, moving and sorrowful, moist and redolent… do you all understand? He stretched his arms out to the audience, as they craned their necks toward him. We sat there bug-eyed, our mouths open, as if we wanted to go up to see, then eat, a miraculous potion lying in the palm of his hands, which were, in fact, empty.

The colors emanating from your eyes are incredibly moving. Only people who speak to God can create colors like that. You see sights we cannot see, you hear sounds we cannot hear, you smell odors we cannot smell. What grief we feel! When speech streams from that organ called your mouth, it is like a melody, a rounded, flat river, a silken thread from the rear end of a spider waving gossamerlike in the air, the size of a chicken’s egg, just as smooth and glossy, and every bit as wholesome. We are intoxicated by that music, we drift in that river, we dance on that silken spider thread, we see God. But before we see Him, we watch our own corpses float down the river…

Why were the owls’ screeches so gentle that night, like the pillow talk of lovers? Because there was liquor in the air. Why were geese, wild and domestic, coupling in the freezing night, when it wasn’t even the mating season? Again, because there was liquor in the air. My nose twitched spiritedly. Fang Nine asked in a soft, muffled voice:

‘Why are you scrunching up your nose like that? Going to sneeze?’

‘Liquor,’ I said. I smell liquor!’

They scrunched up their noses too. Seventh Uncle’s nose was amass of wrinkles.

‘I don’t smell liquor,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’

My thoughts were galloping. ‘Sniff the air,’ I said, ‘sniff it.’

Their eyes darted all around the room, searching every corner. Seventh Uncle picked up the grass mat covering the brick bed, to which Seventh Aunt reacted angrily:

‘What are you looking for? You think there’s liquor here in bed? You amaze me!’

Seventh Aunt was an intellectual, as I said earlier, so she was amazed.’ Back when she was still a newlywed, she criticized my mother for washing the rice so hard she scrubbed away all the ‘vitamins.’ ‘Vitamins’ had my mother gaping in stupefaction.

The smell of liquor includes protein, ethers, acids, and phenols, as well as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chlorine, sulfur, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, iodine, and cobalt, plus vitamins A, B, C, D, E, H, and some other materials – but look at me, listing the ingredients of liquor for you people, when your Professor Yuan Shuangyu knows them better than anyone -my father-in-law’s neck deltoids had reddened over being praised by Deputy Head Diamond Jin. I couldn’t see the excitement in his face, though basically I could, or nearly so – but there is a pervasive something in the smell of liquor that transcends the material, and that is a spirit, a belief, a sacred belief, one that can be sensed but not articulated – language is so clumsy, metaphors so inferior – it seeps into my heart and makes me shudder. Comrades, students, is it possible that we still need to demonstrate whether liquor is a harmful insect or a beneficial one? No way, no way at all. Liquor is a swallow it’s a frog it’s a red-eyed wasp it’s a seven star ladybug, it’s a living pesticide! His spirits soared, and he waved his arms fervently, lost in the exuberance of the moment. The atmosphere in the lecture hall was white-hot; he stood there looking like Hitler. He said:

‘Seventh Uncle, just look, the smell of liquor seeps in through the window, settles in through the ceiling, enters wherever there’s a hole or a crack…’

‘The boy is losing his mind,’ Fang Nine said as he sniffed the air. ‘Do smells have color? Can you see them? This is lunacy…’

Doubt clouded their eyes; they looked at me the way they’d look at a child who had truly lost his mind. But to hell with them. On flying feet, I crossed a bridge of colors paved with the smell of liquor, feet flying… and a miracle occurred, my dear students, a miracle occurred! His head sagged from the weight of his emotions. Then, as he stood at the podium in the General Education Lecture Hall at the Brewer’s College, he intoned in a hoarse but extraordinarily infectious voice:

The picture of a glorious banquet on a snowswept night formed in my mind’s eye: A bright gas lamp. An old-fashioned square table. A bowl sits on the table, steam rising from within. Four people sit around the table, each holding a small bowl of liquor, as if cupping a rosy sunset. Their faces are kind of blurred… Aiie! They’ve cleared up, and I know who they are,…the Branch Secretary, the Brigade Accountant, the Militia Commander, the Head of the Women’s League… they’re holding stewed legs of lamb, dipping them into garlic paste laced with soy sauce and sesame oil… pointing my finger, I was talking to Seventh Uncle and the others, like an announcer, but my eyes were blurred, and I couldn’t see their faces clearly. Yet I didn’t dare strain too hard for fear that the picture would dissolve… Seventh Uncle grabbed my hand and shook it hard.

‘Little Fish [Yu], Little Fish! What’s happened to you?’

As he shook my hand with his left hand, Seventh Uncle smacked the back of my head with his right. The thumping in my head sounded like a chipped brick or a splintered roof tile breaking the placid, mirrorlike surface of a pond; the water splashed in all directions, raising ripples that tumbled upon one another. The picture shattered, and my mind went blank. Angrily I shouted:

‘What are you doing? What are all you people doing?’

They gazed at me anxiously. Seventh Uncle said:

‘Are you dreaming, boy?’

I’m not dreaming. I saw the Branch Secretary, the Brigade Accountant, the Head of the Women’s League, and the Militia Commander. They were all drinking, and they were dipping legs of lamb into garlic paste, under a gas lamp, around a square table,’

Seventh Aunt yawned grandly.

‘Hallucinating,’ she said.

‘I saw them clear as day!’

Big Man Liu said, 'When I went down to the river to fetch water this afternoon, I did see the Head of the Women’s League and two old ladies washing legs of lamb.’

‘You’re hallucinating, too,’ Seventh Aunt said.

‘I really did!’

‘Really, my ass!’ Seventh Aunt said. ‘I think you’re crazed with hunger.’

The young stove repairman tried to make peace:

‘Stop arguing, I’ll go take a look. You know, investigate.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Seventh Aunt said. ‘Do you believe in hallucinations?’

The little stove repairman said:

‘You folks wait, I’ll run out there and run right back.’

‘Be careful they don’t catch you and beat you up,’ Seventh Uncle cautioned him.

The little stove repairman was already out the door. A gust of cold wind blew in, nearly snuffing out the lamp.

The stove repairman came rushing back in, gasping for air. A gust of cold wind nearly snuffed out the lamp. He gazed at me with the look of a simpleton, as if he’d seen a ghost. Seventh Aunt asked with a sarcastic grin:

‘What did you see?’

The stove repairman turned and said:

‘Fantastic, fantastic, Little Fish is an immortal, he can see everything.’

The stove repairman said that everything was exactly as I had described it. The banquet had taken place at the Branch Secretary’s house. He’d climbed the low wall to see.

Seventh Aunt said:

‘I don’t believe it.’

The little stove repairman went outside to get a frozen sheep’s head, which he held up to show Seventh Aunt. One look stopped Seventh Aunt’s hiccups.

That night we busied ourselves with cleaning the sheep’s head before tossing it into the pot. Our thoughts were on liquor as the sheep’s head stewed. Seventh Aunt was the one who came up with the idea: Drink ethyl alcohol

Seventh Uncle, a veterinarian, had a bottle of alcohol he used as a disinfectant. Needless to say, we diluted it with water.

Thus began an arduous tempering process.

People who grow up on industrial alcohol will shy away from no alcoholic drinks.

Sad to say, the little stove repairman and Seventh Uncle went blind.

He raised his arm to look at his wristwatch. Dear students, he said, that’s the end of today’s lecture.