2. You’re concerned that my famous Donkey Avenue dish Dragon and Phoenix Lucky Together would attract flies. Please forgive my arrogance, but I think Mo Yan doth protest too much. What’s filthy about a dish that even famed critics and renowned musicians from Beijing shovel down their throats as fast as they can? What we are pursuing is beauty, nothing but beauty. It’s not true beauty if we didn’t create it. Creating beauty with beauty is not true beauty either; real beauty is achieved by transforming the ugly into the beautiful This has two levels of significance. Let me explain. First, there’s no beauty in sticking a donkey dick inside a donkey pussy and putting them on a plate, because they are dark as pitch, incredibly filthy, and they stink like hell No one would eat them, that’s for sure. But the head chef in Yichi Tavern soaks them in fresh water three times, bathes them in bloody water three times, and boils them three times in soda water. Then he strips the penis of its sinewy parts and plucks the pubic hair before frying them both in oil, simmering them in an earthen pot, and steaming them in a pressure cooker, after which he carves different patterns with his refined skills, adds rare seasoning, decorates the dish with bright-colored cabbage hearts, and, voila, the male donkey organ is transformed into a black dragon and the female organ into a black phoenix. A dragon and a phoenix kissing and copulating, coiling around an array of reds and purples, filling the air with fragrance and looking so alive, a treat for the mind and the eye. Isn’t that transforming the ugly into the beautiful? Second, donkey dick and donkey pussy are vulgar terms that assail one’s sense of propriety and cause the imagination of the weak-willed to run wild. Now we change the former’s name into dragon and the latter into phoenix, for the dragon and the phoenix are solemn totems of the Chinese race, lofty, sacred, and beautiful symbols that signify meanings too numerous to mention. Can’t you see that this too is transforming the ugly into the beautiful? Sir, suddenly I sense how similar the process of producing Donkey Avenue’s most famous culinary dish is to the creative process in literature and the arts. Both originate from life yet transcend life. Both transform nature to benefit the human world. Both elevate the vulgar to the level of nobility, convert sensual desire into art, convert grain into alcohol, and turn grief into power.
Sir, I will never replace this dish, regardless of the scare tactics you choose to persuade me.
I believe that ‘Ecstasy’ and ‘Red Locusts’ are two of your best works. Those people who criticize you do so because they have eaten so many placentas and so many babies that the inner heat has risen and fried their brains. Why worry about what they say? The head of Liquorland’s Writers Association is one of those who can’t go without his placenta for even a day. He drinks a soupy mix of placenta and duck eggs, a whole bowlful, which is why his essays are heavy with ‘human taste.’
3. Sir, Yu Yichi is so mysterious, I’m afraid of him. He wants me to write his biography and promises me a big payday, so I’m conflicted. But since you encouraged me to write, I’ll embolden myself by gulping down the soup of courage. But now I want even more for the two of us to collaborate. You’re famous enough that if you helped on the writing, Yu Yichi would be so overjoyed his ass would swing like a pendulum. You don’t know how adorable he is when his ass swings, but just imagine a little Peke frolicking in the snow. He has deep pockets and is never stingy with his money, so you’ll be amply rewarded for your troubles. Besides, you must come visit our Liquorland, take a tour to broaden your views. I think that would benefit your writing, just as a baby banquet is beneficial to one’s health. No matter how you look at it, it’s your loss if you don’t visit Liquorland, if for no other reason than you won’t otherwise get to sample Dragon and Phoenix Lucky Together.
4. As for the beginning section of ‘Donkey Avenue,’ since you praised its grandiloquence, what’s wrong with a little ‘nonsense’? There are so many publications full of tongue-twisting rubbish these days, why should I ‘delete altogether’ my ‘grandiloquent nonsense’? I’m unwilling and unable to accept your recommendation.
5. The father of the twin dwarf sisters is indeed a leader in the Central Government, so why ask me to downgrade him? Besides, even if I wanted to demote him to the head of a remote mountain village, would he do it? He’d likely fight me to the death over it. On the other hand, since literature and art are, after all, fabrications, if people want to identify the characters with real-life people, let them. That’s not my problem. And if I have to pay with my life if his heart explodes from anger? Well, a life for a life, so be it. ‘A true soldier fears not death, so do not attempt to frighten him with it.’ decapitation feels like the wind blowing off a hat.’ ‘Twenty years from now I’ll be a hero again.’
Sir, please send my regards to Zhou Bao and Li Xiaobao, and ask the two gentlemen if they need any good liquor. Also, in October, Liquorland will host its first Ape Liquor Festival, a rare occasion not only in Liquorland but throughout Greater China. Vintage liquors from all over the world will be available to valiant individuals from all corners to drink to their hearts’ content. All the delicacies in this world will await you – Mo Yan, my mentor – and you can wolf them all down. Your family is also invited. My father-in-law, Yuan Shuangyu, is the Vice-Director of the Technical Advisory Committee for this first annual Ape Liquor Festival, so you will want for nothing.
Wishing you good health,
I am Your disciple
Li Yidou
written in drunkenness
Chapter Five
I
Ding Gou’er wrapped his long arms tightly around the lady trucker’s waist and crushed his lips skillfully against hers. She wrenched her head this way and that to break off the kiss, but he matched her, wrench for wrench, neutralizing her movements. And in the midst of those struggles he sucked both her fleshy lips into his mouth. She blubbered a series of curses: Goddamn it! Goddamn you! These goddamn its and goddamn yous were spit right into Ding Gou’er’s mouth, where they were soaked up by his tongue, his gums, and his throat. Experience told him that the struggle probably wouldn’t last long, that pretty soon her face would turn red and moist, she’d start breathing hard, her belly would heat up, and she’d melt in his arms like a tame little kitten. That’s how women are. But what actually happened quickly proved he had blurred the distinction between the general and the specific. The woman was not incapacitated by the anesthesia in his mouth, and her struggle to resist did not abate just because he had her in a lip-lock; in fact, it increased and grew more frenzied. She clawed at his back, she kicked him in the legs, she kneed him in the groin. Her belly was hot as live cinders, her breath intoxicating as strong liquor. Incredibly aroused, Ding Gou’er was willing to subject his body to as much abuse as necessary before breaking off the kiss. He even tried to force his tongue between her clenched teeth. That was his downfall.
He never imagined that when she unclenched her teeth, it was just a ploy to allow his tongue to slip into her mouth. Then, with a sudden reclamping of her teeth, she drew a screech from the investigator, as a stabbing pain quickly spread from his tongue to every inch of his body. Ding Gou’er’s arms flew off the lady trucker’s waist, and he leaped away, a foul yet sweet taste emanating from a hot sticky liquid filling his mouth. He knew, as he clapped his hand over his mouth, that this spelled trouble. All of a sudden, no tongue. Bad news! In the investigator’s long history of romantic conquests, this was his first tragic failure. You fucking daughter of a whore! he cursed inwardly, as he bent over to spit out a mouthful of blood. Stars lit up the sky, but the ground was hazy; he knew he’d spit out blood, even though he couldn’t see the color of the stuff. What worried him most, of course, was the tongue itself, so he gently tried touching his teeth and lips; happily, it was still attached, but he detected a small gap on the tip. That’s where the blood was coming from.