Jiu guo, known in English as The Republic of Wine, is a satirical novel. A special investigator is sent to a remote mining region to look into rumours of an extraordinary and disturbing banquet among local officials. As he drinks his way deeper into the district, the story becomes stranger and more chaotic, with letters from an aspiring writer mixed into the narrative. The book mocks bureaucracy, appetite and excess, and plays with the form of the novel itself.