The Republic of Wine

were quickly refilled.
    ‘No more for me,’ Ding Gou’er demurred. ‘Too much liquor makes work impossible.’
    ‘Happy events call for double! Happy events call for double!’
    Ding Gou’er quickly covered his glass with his hand.
    1 said, no more,’ he said, ‘that’s it for me.’
    ‘Three glasses to begin the meal. It’s a local custom.’ With three glasses of liquor now under his belt, Ding Gou’er was getting light-headed, so he picked up his chopsticks and reached out for some rice noodles, which, with their mixed-in eggs, were slippery. Either the Party Secretary or the Mine Director, helpful as always, anchored the two thin noodles with his own chopsticks and helped carry them to his mouth.
    ‘Suck!’ he directed loudly.
    Ding Gou’er sucked with all his might, and with a loud slurp, the quivering noodles slipped into his mouth. One of the attendants covered her mouth and giggled. A woman laughing for all to see raises a man’s sense of glee. Suddenly, the atmosphere around the table had turned lively.
    The glasses were refilled; the Party Secretary or Mine Director raised his and said, ‘A visit by Special Investigator Ding Gou’er to our humble mine is a great honor, and on behalf of all the cadres and miners, let me offer three toasts. Refusing to drink them will show your disdain for members of the working class, to the black-faced miners who dig the coal’
    Noting the blush of excitement on the man’s pale face, Ding Gou’er contemplated the eloquent toast, so pregnant with significance that he could not refuse. It was as if the eyes of thousands of coal miners, in their hard-hats and tightly cinched belts, sooty from head to toe, white teeth glistening, were trained on him, raising a tumult in his heart. With a show of bravado, he tossed down three glassfuls, one after the other.
    The other man wasted no time in raising his glass to wish Special Investigator Ding Gou’er good health and happiness on behalf of his own eighty-three-year-old mother. Now Ding Gou’er was a filial son whose white-haired old mother still lived in the countryside, so how could he refuse to drink, son to mother?
    After nine cups of liquor had sloshed into his stomach, the investigator felt his consciousness being stripped from his body. No, stripped is the wrong image. He was sure that his consciousness had turned into a butterfly whose wings were curled inward for the moment, but was destined to emerge with exquisite beauty from the central meridian of his scalp, stretching its neck as it worked its way out. The empty shell abandoned by the butterfly of his consciousness would be its cocoon, devoid of heft, light as a feather.
    At his hosts’ urging, he had no choice but to drink, one cup after another, as if trying to fill a bottomless pit, yet leaving not even a tiny echo in its wake. As they drank and drank, an unending succession of steaming, mouth-watering dishes was trundled into the room by three red serving girls, like three tongues of flame, like three balls rolling here and there, lightning-fast. He vaguely recalled eating a red crab the size of his hand; thick juicy prawns covered in red oil; a green-shelled turtle steeped in celery broth; a stewed chicken, golden yellow in color, its eyes reduced to tiny slits, like a new variety of camouflaged tank; a red carp, slick with oil, its gaping mouth still moving; steamed scallops stacked in the shape of a little pagoda; as well as red-skinned turnips, so fresh they could have just been plucked from the garden. His taste buds were alive with aromatic tastes: oily, sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, salty; his mind visited by a welter of thoughts, he gazed around the room through the aromatic haze. A pair of eyes suspended in the air saw molecules of colors and odors of every conceivable shape moving with infinite freedom in the finite space to form a three-dimensional body in the shape and size of the dining hall. To be sure, there were also molecules stuck to the wallpaper, stuck to the window curtains, stuck to the sofa covers, stuck to lamps, stuck to red girls’ eyelashes, stuck to the greasy foreheads of the Party Secretary and Mine Director, stuck to all those shimmering beams of light, once shapeless, now possessing bending, twisting shapes…
    After a while, he sensed that a hand with many fingers was offering him a glass of red wine. The last remaining dregs of consciousness in the shell that was his body pulled together for one final