Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his generosity and kindness, was dispossessed of his land during Mao's Land Reform of 1948 and brutally executed, despite his innocence. He ends up in Hell, where the king of the underworld subjects Ximen Nao to endless torture, trying to force him to admit his guilt. Having failed to achieve the result, the devil allows Ximen Nao to return to earth, to his own farm, where he is born not as a man, but first as a donkey, then an ox, a pig, a dog, a monkey, and finally a boy with a big head named Lan Qiansui. Through the eyes of these animals, Ximen Nao narrates fifty years of modern Chinese history, ending on the eve of the new millennium.