The Republic of Wine

Yidou
    III
    Dear Elder Brother Yidou
    Your letter and the ‘chronicle-story’ ‘Yichi the Hero’ arrived safely.
    Your last letter was uncompromisingly candid. I admire that, so you have nothing to fear. I couldn’t reply right away because I was out of town. Still no news regarding your stories, and I can only counsel patience.
    Dragon and Phoenix Lucky Together is only a culinary dish. As such it has no class attributes, and thus cannot possibly be attacked for having bourgeois liberalization tendencies. There’s no need to delete it from ‘Donkey Avenue,’ and certainly you needn’t remove it from the Yichi Tavern menu. If I visit Liquorland someday, I want to try this world-class gourmet treat, and how will I do that if it’s not on the menu? Besides, these objects have such high culinary value that it would be a shame not to eat them, and stupid to boot. And since they must be eaten, there’s probably no more civilized way to prepare them than as Dragon and Phoenix Lucky Together. Finally, even if you tried to take it off the menu, Proprietor Yu wouldn’t permit it.
    I’m getting more and more interested in this Yu Yichi character, and am willing in principle to work with him on his life story. He can set the fee. If he wants to give a lot, I’ll take it; if he wants to give a little, I’ll take that too; and if he doesn’t want to give anything, that’s OK with me. It’s not money that attracts me to the project, but his celebrated experiences. I have the vague impression that Yu Yichi is the very soul of Liquorland, that he embodies the spirit of his age - half angel, half devil. Revealing the spiritual world of this individual could very well constitute my greatest contribution to literature. You may forward my initial response to Mr Yu.
    I’m not going to flatter you on ‘Yichi the Hero.’ You call it a short story, but to me it’s a hodgepodge, in every respect a mirror image of the scattered donkey parts in Yichi Tavern. In it you include a letter to me, excerpts from Strange Events in Liquorland , and the incoherent ramblings of Yu Yichi himself. It’s as unconstrained as a heavenly steed soaring through the skies, completely out of control. In years past I’ve been criticized as being out of control, but compared to you, I’m the embodiment of moderation. We live in an age of strict adherence to law and order, and that includes the writing of fiction. For that reason, I do not intend to send your manuscript to Citizens 3 Literature - I’d be wasting my time. I’ll hold on to it for the time being and return it when I visit Liquorland. I will, as you suggested, refer to the material in the story. Thanks for the generous offer.
    One more thing: Do you have a copy of Strange Events in Liquorland 7 . If so, please send it to me as soon as possible. You can make a photocopy if you’re afraid it might get lost somewhere along the way. I'll reimburse you for the copying costs.
    Wishing you
    Peace,
    Mo Yan
    IV
    Yichi the Hero, by Li Yidou
    Please have a seat, Doctor of Liquor Studies, so we can have a heart-to-heart talk, he said with slippery intimacy as he sat on his haunches on his leather-covered swivel chair. The look on his face and the tone of his voice were like clouds at sunset, dazzlingly bright and in constant flux. He looked like a fearful demon, one of those patently evil, heretical knights-errant in kung-fu novels; my nerves were frayed as I sat on the sofa opposite him. You little rascal, he mocked, just when did you and that stinking rascal Mo Yan team up together? Cackling like a mother hen feeding her chicks (although I was trying to explain myself, not actually cackling), I said, He is my mentor, ours is a literary relationship. To this day I haven’t met him face-to-face, one of the great regrets of my life. With a sinister heh heh heh, he said, Mo is not the real family name of that rascal Mo Yan, you know. His real family name is Guan, which makes him the seventy-eighth descendant of Guan Zhong, Prime Minister of the state of Qi during the Warring States period, or so he claims. In fact, that’s pure bullshit. A writer, you say? To listen to him, you’d think he was some sort of literary genius. Well, I know everything there is to know about him. Astonished, I blurted out, How could you know everything there is to know about my mentor? To which he replied, Do nothing if you want nothing to be known. That rascal’s been no good since he was a kid. At the age