Grandfather Ding is the patriarch of the family that founded Ding Village. He dreams of a world that sometimes comes true and sometimes should but doesn't. Both of his sons are ne’er-do-wells, one a crooked, arrogant man who becomes a high level Communist cadre with boatloads of money, the other a layabout who makes nothing of his life. The older son makes his money from being a “blood head," a man who buys and sells blood in the rural communities and ultimately infects an entire Chinese province with AIDS through contaminated blood.