In a Chinese factory town from the late 1940s through the Cultural Revolution's aftermath, cart-pusher Xu Sanguan starts selling his own blood to make ends meet for his wife and three sons—then builds a ritual of rice wine and fried pork liver around each sale. As decades of hardship press in, that stopgap becomes a lifeline he returns to again and again.
When work and savings run out, the poor can still sell part of their own body, and the price can be startling. One sale of blood paid a farmer more than six months in the fields. That makes the body the family's emergency fund.
Selling a piece of yourself can be a way of tying yourself to other people rather than enriching yourself. Each sale buys something for someone else: a meal for a sweetheart, food for a starving family, a favor for a child far away. The pain becomes the proof of the bond.
Many cultures put things you may sell, like a house or land, apart from things you must never sell. Blood falls on the forbidden side because it is felt to come down from your ancestors. Selling it feels like selling the family line itself, not just a body part.
A sacrifice that is survivable once becomes dangerous when hard times force it again and again. Each time, a ritual meal of pork livers and warm wine is meant to restore what was lost. But frequent losses pile into a deficit that no ritual can refill.
In an ordinary household, the state's big slogans about national glory and equality barely register. What fills the days is getting food, money, and care for one's family. History shows up mainly as hunger and pressure on the people you love.