The Drunkard: A Novel by Liu Yichang

Author:Liu Yichang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Published: 2020-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

A Surreal Interlude

I’m drunk.

Brandy. Whisky. Gin. Care must be taken when letting off firecrackers over the New Year. Floors of building available for separate sale. Instalment payments welcome. It’s official: double-decker buses are now in operation. Peach blossom at five thousand a tree. End-of-year debt settlement. A new jockey on the track.

(People queuing up for change. Money makes the mare go round. Moneyless men become mares. Moneyed mares become men. This is a man-eat-man world. A mare-eat-man world. A mare-eat-mare world.)

(A family of eight sharing one bed. Suzie Yeung’s pet dog only eats beef bone-meal. Street food-stalls now offering steamed rice with barbecued pork. Blessed are the gangsters who hang out in fingers-only nightclubs. A bottleneck is also a death-bend. Have sons, make a fortune. The Dragonara Cantonese Opera Company presents The Female Chancellor. William Holden has investments throughout the world. An auspicious outlook for the New Year. Even when they’re frightened, children chase happiness. Best wishes for a Happy New Year. Someone deep-frying festive dumplings. Someone writing lucky words on strips of red paper. Someone letting off firecrackers. Someone wiping away tears in the dark.)

(The Bing Crosby Show on TV.)

(Culturally, China is stuck in the Dark Ages. I have a sudden vision of a nude by Henri Matisse. The pirate publishers of Taiwan should all be sent to jail. The Hong Kong pirates should be exiled. Pirates are vermin. The authorities should do more to protect culture. But why take things so seriously? After all, these days less and less people care about literature. Perhaps in a hundred years, the government will learn to protect copyright. But people alive now won’t be here in a hundred years …)

(The West has astronauts; we only have Yi, the mythical archer. The West has The Old Man and the Sea; we only have The Tale of the Extraordinary Swordsman. The West has the Surrealist Manifesto;

we only have kungfu fiction, which in a way is surreal enough …)

(Fourteen thousand books published in Britain every year.)

(Literary masturbation. Fingers-only dance-halls. Laughter everywhere. A kid spends on firecrackers the money his father got from pawning his watch.)

I’m drunk.

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