Liang Yuemei cooked an extra dish at noon, and Li Long brought out the Moutai he had bought.
"Sauce aroma? With that strong fermentation-starter taste, what's worth drinking? You wasted your money on this!" Li Jianguo slapped his thigh when he saw the liquor. "It wasn't cheap, was it? Can you return it? If you can, take it back. What's so good about drinking this?"
Sure enough, the man at the counter had been right.
"It's a famous brand," Li Long said with a smile. "Don't you want to try some?"
"No, no. I've had it before. The liquor taste is too strong. I'm not used to it." Li Jianguo turned and took a Plastic Cage out from under the bed—it was the flat, rectangular kind, available in one-, three-, five-, and ten-liter sizes.
Ever since the General Store had started selling these things, people had really taken to them-farmers used them to carry water when working in the fields, to buy loose liquor, and to hold honey. Herders also used them for their homemade fermented mare's milk.
They were practically all-purpose jugs.
The one Li Jianguo brought out held five liters and was more than half full of something Li Long guessed was liquor.
"If we're drinking, let's drink this. Yours might come in a bottle and ours might be loose, but this is genuine grain liquor, made by the food company's distillery."
"When did you buy it, big brother?" Li Long was a little puzzled. He didn't remember seeing his brother buy this liquor, though honestly, Li Jianguo's drinking capacity really was something else.
"Buy it? I didn't. Someone gave it to me." Li Jianguo sat down and opened the jug while Li Long fetched three cups and set them on the table.
Li Juan and Li Qiang