The Republic of Wine

cornfield, the dry leaves brushed against his eyes and made them water. The old man catching crickets was nowhere in sight. He was still a long way from the truck when he heard the lady trucker bellow:
    ‘Where in the goddamned hell did you go to get that water, the Yellow River or the Yangtze?’
    He set the bucket of water down and flexed his poor, numbed muscles.
    ‘I got it in your mama’s goddamned Yarlung Zangbou River.’
    ‘Goddamn it to hell, I thought you fell into the river and drowned.’
    ‘I not only didn’t drown, I watched one of your mama’s goddamned videos.’
    ‘One of those goddamn-it-to-hell kung-fu films or a porn job?’
    It wasn’t one of your mama’s goddamn kung-fu films and it wasn’t a porn job. It was about that rare delicacy, chicken-head rice.’
    ‘What’s so rare about chicken-head rice and what the goddamn hell’s the idea of your mama’s goddamn this and your mama’s goddamn that?’
    If not for those your mama’s goddamn this and goddamn thats I’d have to find some other way to shut your mama’s goddamn mouth.’
    Ding Gou’er grabbed the lady trucker around the waist, wrapped his arms tightly around her, and crushed his multi-flavored mouth onto hers.
    II
    Dear Mo Yan
    Your letter arrived safely.
    Still no word from Citizens’ Literature . I’m getting anxious, and I wish you’d nudge the editors, Zhou Bao and Li Xiaobao, one more time, urging them to get in touch with me.
    Last night I wrote another story, which I call ‘Donkey Avenue.’ For this story I adopted creative techniques from the martial-arts genre, and I ask you to read it with your customary discerning eye. You have my permission to forward it to the magazine of your choice.
    I’m sending the research material on liquor you requested. As for the thirty bottles of fine liquor, I'll send them with the next bus to Beijing. For a master to drink his disciple’s liquor is in perfect accord with the nature of things. You’ll recall how Confucius asked for ten strings of dried meat from each of his disciples as ‘tuition’ for the instruction he dispensed.
    The continued silence from Citizens’ Literature has sent me into a funk, as if my soul had taken flight. As someone who has had the same experience, you must understand how I feel
    Respectfully wishing you
    Happy writing!
    Your disciple
    Li Yidou
    III
    My Brother Yidou
    I received your letter and the manuscript. The research material on liquor hasn’t arrived yet, but printed matter usually takes longer.
    I do indeed understand how you feel, since I've been there myself. To be honest, I've done or considered doing just about anything I could think of to see one of my manuscripts get into print. As soon as I received your letter, I placed a phone call to Zhou Bao, who told me he’s read all three of your stories, several times each. He said he still can’t make up his mind, that he simply doesn’t know what to say. He wanted me to tell you he’s agonizing over it. He’s sent all three to Li Xiaobao, asking him to give them a quick read and let him know what he thinks. The last thing he said was that even though there are parts of all three stories he has some problems with, the author’s talent is unquestioned. That should make you feel better. For a writer, talent is everything. Lots of people make a career out of writing, producing many works and knowing exactly what it takes to become a great writer. But they never break into the big time, because they lack one thing: talent, or a sufficient amount of it.
    I’ve already read ‘Donkey Avenue’ three times, and my overall opinion is that it is unrestrained, bold. It reminds me a bit of a wild donkey rolling on the ground and kicking its legs in the air. In a word: wild. You didn’t happen to write it after drinking some Red-Maned Stallion, did you?
    There were a few spots where I didn’t understand what you were getting at, so here are some hastily formed opinions:
    i. Is that scaly boy who rides the little black donkey in the story, the one who can fly on eaves and walk on walls as if his feet were on solid ground, a chivalric hero or a thief? He has already made appearances in ‘Meat Boy’ and ‘Child Prodigy’ (he is the same person, isn’t he?), and always as a mere mortal, it seems. Now in this story he has become a sort of superman, half genie and half goblin, which may be a bit much, don’t you think? Of course, you never said that these stories comprised a