His oration that day had us dumbstruck, we shallow college students and slightly less shallow graduate students. He had consumed more liquor than we had drunk water. Genuine knowledge comes from practice, my dear students. A marksman feeds on bullets; a drinking star is steeped in alcohol There are no shortcuts on the road to success, and only those fearless people who have the courage to keep climbing on a rugged mountain path have any hope of reaching the glorious summit!
Truth’s glory shone down upon us, and we responded with thunderous applause.
Students, I had a miserable childhood. Great people struggle their way out of the seas of misery, and he was no exception. I yearned for liquor, but there was none. Deputy Head Jin related to us how, under highly adverse circumstances, he substituted industrial alcohol for sorghum liquor in order to toughen his internal organs, and I want to use pure literature to portray this extraordinary experience. I took a drink and clinked my glass down on the lacquer tray. It was getting dark, and Diamond Jin stood somewhere between Deputy Head and ecstatic sperm. He waved to me. He was wearing a tattered lined jacket as he led me to his hometown.
A cold winter night, a crescent moon and a skyful of stars illuminated the streets and the houses, the dry, withered branches and leaves of willow trees, and the plum blossoms of Diamond Jin’s village. Not long after a recent heavy snowfall, the sun had come out twice, melting the snow and forming icicles that hung from eaves and gave off a faint glow of their own under the natural light from above; the accumulated snow on rooftops and tips of branches glowed as well. Based upon Deputy Head Jin’s description, it was not a particularly windy winter night, as the ice on the river cracked and split under the onslaught of the astonishing cold. The cracks sounded like explosions in the late night air. Then the night grew quieter and quieter. The village was fast asleep, that village in our Liquorland suburbs, and one day we may very well take a ride in Deputy Head Jin’s VW Santana to admire the sacred spots and visit the sites of relics; every mountain, every river and lake, every blade of grass, and every tree can only increase our reverence for Deputy Head Jin; and what intimate feelings they will be! Just think, born in an impoverished, ramshackle village, he climbed slowly into the sky until he shone down over all of Liquorland, a resplendent star of liquor, his radiance dazzling our eyes and filling them with tears, causing an upsurge of emotions. A broken-down cradle is still a cradle, nothing can replace it, and every indication points to the likelihood that a limitless future stretches out ahead of Deputy Head Jin. When we follow in the footsteps of Diamond Jin, who has entered the top ranks of leadership, wandering through the streets and byways of his Diamond Village, when we linger on the edges of his murmuring streams, when we stroll along the high, tree-lined banks of the rivers, when we amble past his cattle pens and stables… when the sorrows and ecstasies of his childhood, his loves and his dreams… ad nauseam flood his heart like floating clouds and flowing water, how can we gauge his state of mind? How does he walk? What is his expression like? When he walks, does he start with his left foot or his right? What is his left arm doing when he strides forward with his right foot? What about his right arm when he strides with his left foot? How does his breath smell? What’s his blood pressure? His heart rate? Do his teeth show when he smiles? Does his nose crinkle when he weeps? So much cries out to be described, and there are so few words in my lexicon. I can only raise my glass. Out in the yard, snow-laden dead branches cracked and splintered; ice on a distant pond was three inches thick; dried-out ice covered clumps of reeds; geese, wild and domestic, roosting for the night were startled out of their dreams and honked crisply, the sound carrying through the clean, chilled air all the way to the eastern room of the home of Diamond Jin’s seventh uncle. He says he went to his seventh uncle’s house every evening, and stayed till late at night. The walls were jet-black; a kerosene lamp stood atop an old three-drawer table against the east wall. Seventh Aunt and Seventh Uncle sat on the brick bed platform; the little stove repairman, Big Man Liu, Fang Nine, and storekeeper Zhang all sat on the edge of the platform killing time through the long night, just like me. Every night they came; not even stormy weather could keep them away. They reported on what they’d done that day and passed on news they’d picked up in villages and hamlets in rich, vivid detail, full of wit and humor, painting a vast canvas of village life and customs. A life rich with literary appeal The cold was like a wildcat that crept in through cracks and gnawed at my feet. He was just a child who couldn’t afford a pair of socks, and had to curl his blackened, chapped feet in woven-rush sandals, icy drops of sweat coating his soles and the spaces between his toes. The kerosene lamp seemed to blaze in the dark room, making the white paper over the window sparkle, the freezing air streaming in through its rips and tears; sooty smoke from the kerosene flame wisped toward the ceiling in neat coils. Seventh Aunt and Seventh Uncle’s two children were asleep in a corner of the brick bed; the girl’s breathing was even, the boy’s was labored, high one moment, low the next, mingled with nightmare babble that sounded like a dream brawl with a gang of ruffians. Seventh Aunt, a bright-eyed, educated woman with a nervous stomach was hiccuping audibly. Seventh Uncle gave every appearance of being a muddle-headed man whose nondescript face had no distinctive curves or angles, like a slab of gooey rice-cake. His clouded eyes were forever fixed dully on the lighted lamp. Actually, Seventh Uncle was a shrewd man who had schemed and plotted to trick the educated Seventh Aunt, ten years his junior, into marrying him; it was a convoluted campaign that would take far too long to recount here. Seventh Uncle was an amateur veterinarian who could puncture a vein in a sow’s ear and inject penicillin intravenously, and who also knew how to castrate hogs, dogs, and donkeys. Like all men in the village, he liked to drink, but now the bottles were empty; all the fermentable grains had been used up, and food had become their biggest concern. He said, We suffered through the long winter nights with growling stomachs, and at the time no one dreamed that I’d ever make it to this day. I don’t deny that my nose is keenly sensitive where alcohol is concerned, especially in rural villages where the air is unpolluted. On cold nights in rural villages, threads of a variety of smells come through clear and distinct, and if someone is drinking liquor anywhere within a radius of several hundred meters, I can smell it.