The Republic of Wine

spotted Li Yidou, Doctor of Liquor Studies and amateur short-story writer, as he approached the exit, a conclusion he reached instinctively when he saw a tall, skinny man with a triangular face. He headed straight for the slightly menacing eyes.
    The man stuck his long, bony hand over the railing and said, If I’m not mistaken, you must be Mo Yan.’
    Mo Yan took the icy-cold hand in his and said, ‘Sorry to put you to all this trouble, Li Yidou!’
    The duty ticket-taker pressed Mo Yan to show her his ticket. ‘Show his what?’ Li Yidou all but shouted. ‘Do you know who this is? He’s Mo Yan, the man who wrote the movie Red Sorghum , that’s who. He’s an honored guest of our Municipal Party Committee and government, that’s who!’
    Momentarily taken aback, she stared wordlessly at Mo Yan, which he found embarrassing. He quickly produced his ticket, but Li Yidou dragged him past the railing. ‘Don’t mind her,’ he said.
    Li Yidou took Mo Yan’s bag and threw it over his own shoulder. He must have been at least five-feet-ten, a head taller than Mo Yan, who took some comfort in noting that Li Yidou was at least fifty pounds lighter than he.
    ‘Sir,’ Li Yidou said spiritedly, ‘as soon as I received your letter, I passed the good news to Municipal Party Committee Secretary Hu, who said, “Welcome, welcome, a hearty welcome.” I was here once already - last night - with a car.’
    ‘But I made it clear in my letter that I’d arrive in the early morning of the 29th.’
    ‘I was afraid that if you arrived ahead of schedule,’ Li Yidou replied, ‘you’d be all alone in a strange city. I preferred making an extra trip to having you wait for me all that time.’
    ‘I really have put you to a lot of trouble,’ Mo Yan said with a smile.
    ‘At first the municipal authorities wanted Deputy Head Diamond Jin to meet you, but I said I’m Mo Yan’s close friend, and since he and I don’t have to stand on ceremony, I’m the best person for the job.’
    We walked toward a fancy sedan parked in a square illuminated by a ring of streetlights. The rain made the sedan look even fancier than it was. ‘General Manager Yu is waiting in the car,’ Li Yidou said. ‘The car belongs to his tavern.’
    ‘Which General Manager Yu would that be?’
    ‘Yu Yichi, of course!’
    Mo Yan tensed, as a host of depictions of Yu Yichi slogged through his mind. If things had reached the point where the dwarf, who was unrelated to the investigator, could still wind up dead of a bullet in the investigator’s dream, then ghosts and goblins were running the show. I might as well use my Tales of Investigator Ding Gou’er as kindling for the oven, he mused.
    ‘General Manager Yu Yichi insisted on coming,’ Li Yidou commented. ‘He wanted the pleasure of being first on the scene for your arrival He knows what it means to be a real pal Sir, don’t - please don’t - judge him solely by his appearance. If you give him one measure of respect, he’ll repay you a hundred times over.’
    The words still hung in the air when the car door opened and out jumped a pocket-sized man less than three feet tall (‘twelve inch’ [Yichi] was an exaggeration of his smallness). Small but sturdy, he was neatly dressed, looking very much like a well-bred member of the gentry.
    ‘Mo Yan, you little scamp, so you finally made it!’ he shouted with an infectious hoarseness as soon as he was out of the car. He ran up to Mo Yan, grabbed his hand, and shook it hard, as if they were old friends who hadn’t seen each other for years.
    As Mo Yan grasped the tense, nervous hand, he couldn’t suppress feelings of remorse over thoughts of how Ding Gou’er had killed this man. Why had it been necessary for him to die? An intriguing little fellow like this, cute as a little wind-up mechanical toy, so what if he’d made love with the lady trucker? He shouldn’t have died; he and Ding Gou’er should have become friends, and together they could have broken the case of the child-eaters.
    Yu Yichi opened the car door for Mo Yan. Once he’d climbed in next to his guest, he said, releasing a mouthful of boozy breath, ‘The doctor talks about you every day. I tell you, this guy worships you. But now that I see you face-to-face, you’re not as handsome as he made you out to be. In fact, you look like a run-of-the-mill purveyor of cheap booze.’
    Stung by the criticism, Mo Yan replied with noticeable sarcasm, ‘Which is why General Manager Yu and I