A narrator sits under a tree with an old man named Fugui, who begins recounting the story of his life.

Fugui loses his family's land and home to a gambler named Long Er through a series of rigged card games.

Fugui's father dies after falling from the top of the family manure vat shortly after the family is forced to move.

Jiazhen's father arrives and takes her back home, leaving Fugui alone with their young daughter Fengxia.

Jiazhen returns to Fugui six months after giving birth to their son Youqing and begins working in the fields beside him.

While going to town for medicine for his ill mother, Fugui is seized by Nationalist soldiers and forced into their army.

The Liberation Army captures Fugui, allows him to go free, and gives him money to travel home after two years away.

Communist authorities confiscate Long Er's land through land reform, redistribute it to the tenants, and execute Long Er publicly.

The people's communes are established, and Fugui's family is stripped of their farmland, livestock, and cooking utensils.

Hospital nurses drain nearly all of Youqing's blood to save a magistrate's wife, and Youqing dies from the blood loss.

At the hospital, Fugui discovers that the town magistrate responsible for Youqing's death is his old war friend Chunsheng.

Fugui and Jiazhen arrange a marriage for deaf-mute Fengxia; she weds a porter named Erxi in an elaborate village ceremony.

Fengxia gives birth to a healthy baby boy but hemorrhages and dies within moments of the delivery.

Jiazhen dies peacefully three months after Fengxia's death.

Fugui rescues an old ox from slaughter, names it after himself, and the narrator watches them walk off together singing.

These events trace the central arc of Fugui's life, from the squandering of his family fortune to his survival through war, revolution, and devastating personal loss. His gambling destroys the family's wealth, setting him on a path of poverty that becomes entangled with China's most violent political upheavals. His forced conscription, liberation, and return home mark his transformation from a selfish young man into a devoted husband and father. The deaths of his son Youqing and daughter Fengxia, both tied to failures of the political system, represent the heaviest blows of his life. Even as Jiazhen dies and Fugui is left utterly alone, he continues to find meaning in daily existence. The image of the old man walking off with his aged ox captures the novel's central message: that life retains value even when everything else has been stripped away.

The major milestones of Fugui's rise, fall, and endurance.

A young narrator recalls roaming the countryside with a carefree job collecting folk songs from rural villages.

Fugui rides on the back of a sex worker through the streets during Nationalist troop celebrations after the Japanese surrender.

Fugui's father explains how family ancestors built their wealth by raising a single chicken until it eventually became an ox.

Changgen, the family's former servant left destitute by Fugui's fall, visits but declines Fugui's offer to come live with him.

During the Nationalist Army siege, Fugui befriends two fellow soldiers: a veteran named Old Quan and a teenager named Chunsheng.

Old Quan is shot dead while searching outside the tunnel for food scraps to keep the surviving soldiers alive.

The Liberation Army marches captured Nationalist soldiers south, feeds them steamed buns, and offers them their freedom.

Fugui returns home from war to find his daughter Fengxia has become completely deaf and mute after a severe illness.

Youqing wears out his shoes running back and forth between school and home each day to feed his beloved lambs.

A month of uninterrupted rain destroys the rice crops, and the older villagers fear the entire community will starve.

Jiazhen secretly travels to town alone and returns with a small bag of precious rice; hungry neighbors immediately surround the hut.

Chunsheng, beaten daily by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, visits Fugui one night to say he intends to die.

Fengxia and her husband Erxi visit Fugui and Jiazhen to announce that Fengxia is pregnant with their first child.

Erxi is crushed to death between two falling cement slabs at his worksite when his son Kugen is four years old.

The narrator watches Fugui speak to his ox as if updating deceased family members, then listens as Fugui walks away singing.

These events highlight the relationships, smaller hardships, and supporting moments that give texture and depth to Fugui's story. The narrator's carefree youth as a folk song collector frames the entire tale, while Fugui's wartime friendships with Old Quan and Chunsheng show the bonds forged under extreme duress. The effects of collectivization emerge through details like Youqing's devotion to his lambs and the communal dining hall's collapse into famine. Characters such as Changgen and Chunsheng illustrate how political change leaves no one untouched, even those who once seemed safely on the right side of history. Fengxia's pregnancy announcement and Erxi's tragic death show how brief happiness is always followed swiftly by loss. The narrator's final image of Fugui talking to his ox as though his family still lives rounds out the portrait of a man who has internalized his grief and transformed it into a quiet form of perseverance.

The supporting moments and relationships that shaped Fugui's world.

The narrator reflects that Fugui stood apart from other old men because he embraced reliving his entire past without shame.

Jiazhen cooks Fugui a meal with pieces of meat hidden beneath differently seasoned vegetarian dishes, trying to teach him a lesson.

Seven months pregnant, Jiazhen goes to the gambling house to retrieve Fugui; he beats her and pays men to drag her out.

After losing everything, Fugui wanders the streets in despair contemplating suicide before finally deciding to go home and face his family.

Fugui's father insists on paying the gambling debt in heavy copper coins, and Fugui's shoulders bleed raw from carrying the loads.

After the siege ends, the Liberation Army offers each captured soldier a choice: go home freely or stay and keep fighting.

Fugui sends Fengxia away to save money for Youqing's schooling, but Youqing's grief compels him to bring her back home.

Jiazhen collapses while watching the iron smelting cauldron; the overturned pot accidentally produces a successful smelt, making Fugui an unlikely hero.

A doctor diagnoses Jiazhen with soft bone disease and tells her to rest, but she refuses to stop working for her family.

Fugui storms into Youqing's school and beats him publicly in front of his teacher and classmates for neglecting his studies.

Fugui breaks his promise to Youqing and sells the family lamb to a slaughterhouse, receiving 40 jin of rice in return.

Jiazhen gradually realizes Youqing is dead; Fugui carries her to the grave where she says Youqing will never run this trail again.

A doctor tells the gravely ill Jiazhen she has less than a month to live, but she unexpectedly recovers after twenty days.

Erxi visits Fengxia awkwardly, then returns with workers who repair Fugui's home and cooks a lavish meal to win the family over.

After Kugen chokes to death on beans, Fugui concludes that striving for advancement causes only suffering and resolves to live simply.

These events focus on the pivotal moments of choice, discovery, and emotional reckoning that mark Fugui's inner journey from reckless youth to quietly resilient old man. Early turning points — Jiazhen's subtle protest, Fugui's post-ruin despair, and his father's punishing lesson with copper coins — reveal how the collapse of wealth forces Fugui to confront who he has been. The war offers a decisive fork in the road when the Liberation Army gives Fugui the chance to go home, a choice that shapes the rest of his life entirely. The commune era brings a series of smaller but equally consequential decisions, from selling Youqing's lamb to publicly humiliating his son, each one tightening the family's hardship. Emotional revelations — Jiazhen's near-death and recovery, her eventual realization of Youqing's death, and the doctor's grim prognosis — punctuate the middle of the story with grief and unexpected resilience. Fugui's final resolve to live simply after Kugen's death represents the culmination of a lifetime of hard-won wisdom.