Still only 45, Mo Yan is perhaps China's best-known novelist in the West, even if more people will have seen the film made of his novel Red Sorghum than will have read the book. Even so, The Republic of Wine has taken a surprisingly long time to appear in translation. It was published in Chinese in Taiwan in 1992, but it did not appear in English until earlier this year.
The Taiwan printing, under the title Jiu Guo (
One of the reasons for the delay in translation into English may have been the heavy work load of its translator. Howard Goldblatt has been hard at work translating Chinese novels for over two decades, and is clearly the leader in his field. With wooden or stumbling translations into English from Asian languages so common, and indeed almost the rule, Arcade probably felt they were better off waiting for Goldblatt to be free than risking a version by anyone else.
This is not to say that Goldblatt is infallible. His recent translation of Wang Shuo's farcical Please Don't Call Me Human appeared at times to be attempting the impossible in its struggle to render colloquial teenage slang. This book, however, shows Goldblatt very much back on form.
This is surprising, in a ways, as the tone of the novel is not unlike Wang Shuo's. Again a savage satirical humor is at work, loud with obscenities and overflowing with grotesque events. Together the two books show a China bursting at the seams with frustration, in this case essentially sexual, but expressing itself through an inordinate consumption of alcohol.
The story tells of an itinerant innocent called Ding Gou'er who arrives, as a "Special Investigator of the Higher Procuratorate," at a coal mine in a region known as "Liquorland" in Shandong Province. Some whistle-blower has written in with the accusation that children are being slaughtered and cooked up by a local meat factory, and Ding Gou'er is charged with the task of investigating the rumor.
His first experience is that of being served up with a banquet of "braised infant boy" by a committee of local officials. "Dark red, shiny grease ran down the face of the tiny, golden-bodied fellow, a smile of impenetrable mystery hanging in the corners of his mouth." More in similar vein is to follow.
The book has a rather formal structure, with every chapter following a near-identical format. First comes an installment of the narrative of Ding Gou'er's surreal adventures, then follows an exchange of letters between an aspiring writer, who goes under the pen name of Li Yidou, and Mo Yan himself. Every time, Li sends the famous author a short story, and these are printed following his letter.
Li Yidou's stories are about the same subject as the scandal Ding Gou'er is investigating in the main narrative, but seen from other perspectives. In the first, for instance, a couple prepare their child for sale to the meat factory, arguing with the officials on arrival that the boy should be graded in the top category (for health, tenderness of flesh, and so on) so as to command the highest possible price.
You first realize the complexity of what the author is attempting when you see that Mo Yan's replies are all framed in totally realistic mode. He is not, in other words, a fictional character, but the author Mo Yan himself, or very nearly. He discusses such topics as the state of Chinese literature, his feelings on walking across Tiananmen Square and the filming of Red Sorghum.
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