The Republic of Wine

odor of urine and a drenched fire.
    He began stripping the clothes from my body, determined to remove my jacket, one way or the other. I heard him panting. Once his task was accomplished, he put the jacket on. The hem came down to his knees. After picking up his new toys, he stuffed them into the jacket pockets. Now what was he going to do?
    He spit the knife out and, gripping it in his hand, took a look around the room. He then carved the character for ten [+] into the wall four times, put the knife back between his teeth, as if clenching a willow leaf, flicked his floppy sleeves, and swaggered out of the room.
    My body, having been dumped back onto the bed, snored on.
    II
    Dear Mo Yan, Sir
    Please permit me to use that address. It’s the only way I can avoid feeling unhappy, awkward, or uncomfortable.
    Sir, you are indeed my true, my genuine, mentor, for not only are you a master novelist, but you know your way around a liquor bottle. Your novels are as finely crafted as the foot wrappings of a practiced grandmother. With liquor your accomplishments are, if anything, even greater. It is no great achievement in this day and age to locate a fine novelist, nor, for that matter, a master disciple of the bottle. But to find them both in a single individual is extraordinarily difficult. And you, Sir, are that unique individual.
    Your analysis of Overlapping Green Ants was both incisive and accurate, the mark of a true connoisseur. The basic ingredients of this liquor are sorghum and mung beans, fermented in an old cellar. The culture for our distiller’s yeast is a mixture of wheat, bran, and peas, with a touch of chaff. The distilled liquor that emerges is a graceful, muted light green in color with a heavy fragrance, rich and full bodied, with a real kick. During the blending process, everything possible has been done to suppress its fiery nature, but with limited success so far. In order to get it to a liquor fair, we marketed the not-yet-perfected brew as Overlapping Green Ants. It is, as you say, high-quality liquor whose imperfection is a lack of harmony.
    Using beautiful women as a metaphor for liquor is the best, most vivid means of characterizing its qualities. Your intuition in this regard was right on the mark. My father-in-law, Professor Yuan Shuangyu, and I have been trying to come up with ways of improving Overlapping Green Ants for a long time, and our contemplations have nearly reached maturity; unfortunately, I have, of late, become so intoxicated with literature that I can think of nothing else.
    Sir, in this vast world, with its teeming multitudes, liquor swells like the seas and spirits flow like rivers, yet the number of true devotees, those who enjoy fine liquor as they marvel over beautiful women, are rare as morning stars, as the feathers of a phoenix or the horn of a unicorn, as a tiger’s penis and a dinosaur egg. You, Sir, are one of them, as am I, your disciple. So, too, is my father-in-law, Yuan Shuangyu; Deputy Head Diamond Jin counts as half of one. The great Tang poet, Li Bai, is one. I raise my glass to the moon ’ With my shadow, we make three.’ How can that be, you ask? Li is one, the moon is another, the third is the liquor. For the moon is Chang’e, the heavenly beauty! The liquor is ‘Qinglian.’ the green lotus, an earthly marvel Li Bai and his liquor are fused into one, becoming what he styled himself- Li Qinglian. That is why he was able to produce such exquisite visions as he roamed freely between Heaven and earth. His fellow Tang poet, Du Fu, counts as half. His intake of liquor was, in the main, limited to village brews, poor in quality, overaged and bitter, coarse and lacking polish, like an old widow; no wonder he was unable to write poetry that was vigorous and lively. Cao Mengde [Cao Cao] was one; singing a song when drinking is the same as serenading a beautiful woman. Life is short, beautiful women are like the morning dew. Beauty is constantly aflow and easily lost, so one must enjoy it while one can. From ancient times till today, a span of five thousand years, the number of individuals who have understood that drinking fine spirits is like adoring a beautiful woman does not exceed a few dozen. All the rest are foul leather sacks that can be filled with any brackish liquid. Why waste a drop of Overlapping Green Ants or Eighteen-Li Red on the likes of them?
    The mere mention of Eighteen-Li Red makes your disciple’s heart flutter. Sir, believe me when I say