The Republic of Wine

of course, the undamaged nests are made of pure saliva, with no impurities - top-quality nests.
    He stretched out his hand, which held a sharp, triple-edged razor. His body was stretched to a frightening length, like a snake. My mother-in-law said she saw shiny beads of sweat dripping down from the ends of his hair. His razor was nearly touching the edge of the giant nest; it did, it touched it! His body stretched even longer, his razor jabbed at the base of the nest, his hand sawing the razor back and forth, while sweat poured from his head. The swallows flew out of the nest; displaying unusual courage, they crashed into his face again and again, showing no fear for their own lives. My mother-in-law said that the nest was firmly anchored to the rock surface, particularly since it was an ancient nest, and actually seemed to be growing out of the rock itself. That made her youngest uncle’s task particularly difficult; ignoring the frenzied swallows that were smacking against his face, he kept a cool head and a firm hand, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes to persevere. He bit his lip and tasted his own blood.
    My mother-in-law said, My God, it was like a hundred years had passed. The colossal nest finally started to tip over and hung by a thread; one more cut, and it would fall off, like an enormous piece of white gold.
    'Little uncle, try a little harder!' my mother-in-law cried out despite herself. Following her cry, his body thrashed forward and the white nest fell from the rock. Drifting and whirling in the air, after the longest time, it landed at her and her father’s feet. Tumbling down with the fallen nest was her little uncle, the one with unsurpassable skills. Normally he could glide down from a height of several feet without hurting himself; but this time he was too high and his body was twisted the wrong way. His brains splashed all over the swallow’s nest; the torch was still burning when it fell to the ground, sputtering out only after it hit the shallow water on the cave floor.
    My mother-in-law said that her father also fell to his death in a cave five years after her youngest uncle. But the job of gathering swallows’ nests didn’t stop just because someone died. She could not continue her father’s line of work, but didn’t want to depend on her uncles either. So, on one hot summer day, carrying the colossal nest stained with her uncle’s blood, she set off on a long journey of her own. She was fourteen years old.
    My mother-in-law said that, under normal circumstances, she could never have become a famous chef of swallows’ nests, for those heart-breaking, soul-stirring scenes flew past her eyes every time she plucked impurities from a nest with a needle. She was able to cook every nest with extreme respect and care only because she knew the bitter hardships - those of the swallows and those of the nest-gatherers - behind each one. She had gained invaluable experience in regard to swallows’ nests. But deep down she was uneasy. The connection between the nests and human brains made her uncomfortable, feelings that disappeared only after Liquorland accomplished the glorious coup of cooking and eating meat boys.
    Clearly worried, my mother-in-law said, 'The demand for swallows’ nests in mainland China rose sharply in the 1990s, while the occupation of gathering the nests in southern China all but disappeared. Now the gatherers take modern equipment like hydraulic lifts into the caves, which not only destroy the nests but kill the swallows in the process. There are, in fact, no more nests to be harvested in China, Under these circumstances, China must import huge quantities of nests from Southeast Asia to supply the demands of the Chinese people, and that has caused the price of swallow’s nest to skyrocket. In Hong Kong, each kilogram costs twenty-five hundred US dollars and the price keeps going up. That, in turn, has driven the gatherers in other countries into a gathering frenzy. In the old days, my father and his brothers only harvested nests once a year, but now gatherers in Thailand harvest them four times annually. Twenty years from now, children will no longer know what a swallow’s nest looks like, my mother-in-law said as she finished the soup in her bowl
    I said, As a matter of fact, even today, there are no more than a thousand Chinese children who have tasted swallow’s nest. The availability of the stuff doesn’t matter to the average person, or to the masses. So