To Live recap

An elderly peasant named Fugui tells a traveler how he once gambled away his wealthy family's estate. Reduced to poverty with his loyal wife Jiazhen and their children Fengxia and Youqing, he is conscripted during the Chinese Civil War and returns to find that survival has spared him from being condemned as a landlord. Political campaigns and material scarcity reshape village life, while disaster repeatedly enters his household: Youqing dies after a hospital takes too much of his blood, Fugui's former army companion Chunsheng is persecuted, and Fengxia dies giving birth to her son Kugen. Jiazhen, Fengxia's husband Erxi, and finally Kugen also die, each loss leaving Fugui with fewer companions. In old age he rescues an ox bound for slaughter, gives it his own name, and works the fields beside it. His story ends without restoring what was lost; its resolution is that he remains able to remember, labor, and live.

A young traveler collecting folk songs meets an old farmer, Fugui, working with an equally old ox. Fugui begins the story of his youth as the spoiled heir of the wealthy Xu family. He spends his nights with prostitutes and at the gambling table while his pregnant wife Jiazhen begs him to come home. Long Er, a calculating gambler, encourages Fugui's arrogance until Fugui signs away the family house and land to cover his debts. Jiazhen's father takes her away, and Fugui's humiliated father dies soon after the family moves into a hut. The loss abruptly makes Fugui responsible for his mother and daughter Fengxia. Jiazhen eventually returns carrying their newborn son Youqing, choosing the ruined household despite the security her own family could offer. Fugui begins farming rented land, discovering both the weight of physical work and the value of the family he had treated carelessly.

Fugui's new life as a poor farmer is interrupted when he goes to town for medicine for his sick mother and is seized by Nationalist troops. Unable to send word home, he is carried into the Chinese Civil War. He befriends the young conscript Chunsheng and the experienced Old Quan as their unit becomes trapped, hungry, and surrounded by dead and wounded soldiers. Old Quan is killed, but Fugui and Chunsheng survive the army's collapse and become Communist prisoners. Fugui is released with a travel permit and makes his way home after years away. His mother has died, Jiazhen has kept the family together, and an illness has left Fengxia unable to hear or speak. Fugui's document helps establish that he was forced into service. He resumes work with Jiazhen and the children, grateful simply to have returned, while the political order of the village changes around them.

Land reform makes Long Er, who won the Xu estate, the village's landlord and brings about his execution. Fugui understands that losing the property may have saved his own life. The family nevertheless remains desperately poor. Fugui and Jiazhen briefly send Fengxia to another household so Youqing can attend school, but they cannot bear the separation and bring her home. During the Great Leap Forward, land and household goods are absorbed into the people's commune, food is served communally, and claims of abundance give way to severe hunger. Youqing runs long distances to school and cares tenderly for his sheep. When the county magistrate's wife suffers complications in childbirth, pupils are called to donate blood. Hospital workers take far too much from Youqing, and he dies. Fugui learns that the magistrate is Chunsheng, his old army companion, but the reunion cannot lessen the family's grief or the hospital's responsibility.

Jiazhen, already weakened by a chronic bone disease, is devastated by Youqing's death. Chunsheng tries to compensate the family, but Jiazhen rejects money as a substitute for her son. During the Cultural Revolution, Chunsheng is denounced and abused because of his official position. Fugui and Jiazhen urge him to hold on to life, yet he later kills himself. Fengxia, now a young woman, marries Wan Erxi, a delivery worker whose crooked neck has made marriage difficult for him. His kindness and practical care bring the family a period of happiness. Fengxia becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, but she dies from blood loss after the delivery. The baby survives and is called Kugen. Jiazhen lives long enough to see her grandson before her own illness ends in death, leaving Fugui and Erxi to care for the child.

Fengxia gives birth to a son but dies from blood loss after the delivery. The baby survives and is called Kugen. Jiazhen lives long enough to see him before dying from her illness, leaving Fugui and Erxi to care for the child. Erxi is then killed in a construction accident, and Kugen goes to live with Fugui in the countryside. The boy shares his grandfather's poverty and hunger but gives him a reason to keep working. One day Fugui cooks a large pot of beans as a rare treat; Kugen, unused to having enough food, eats until he becomes fatally ill. With his grandson's death, Fugui is the only member of his immediate family still alive. In old age he buys an exhausted ox that was about to be slaughtered and names it Fugui. The farmer and animal work together in the fields. Telling his story to the traveler, Fugui invokes his dead relatives as companions and continues toward evening with the ox, his survival neither triumphant nor defeated.

After Fengxia dies giving birth, Jiazhen's long illness also ends in death. Erxi raises Kugen with Fugui's help until a construction accident kills him, leaving the old man and child together. Kugen then dies after eating too many beans while desperately hungry. Fugui has outlived his parents, wife, children, son-in-law, grandson, and the many political campaigns that shaped their lives. Years later he saves an aging ox from slaughter and names it Fugui. When the traveling narrator meets them, the old man works beside the animal and calls out the names of his dead family as though a whole team were sharing the labor. He does not claim that his losses have been redeemed. What remains is his capacity to continue living, carrying the memory of each person without surrendering his attachment to ordinary work and the passing day.