The film is adapted from Mo Yan's two novellas Red Sorghum and Sorghum Wine, published in 1986. In exchange for a mule, the parents of "my grandma" Jiu'er marry her off to a 50-year-old leper who owns a distillery. As Jiu'er is carried to her wedding in a sedan chair, a bandit stops the procession. One of the sedan bearers, Yu Zhan'ao, drives the bandit off, and he and Jiu'er begin to grow fond of each other. Three days later, as Jiu'er returns home to visit her parents, the sedan bearer suddenly bursts out of the sorghum field and carries her off. They make love in the open sorghum field. When Jiu'er returns to the distillery, she finds her leper husband dead. "My grandma" takes charge of the Li family distillery; before long Yu Zhan'ao becomes "my grandpa" and invents a method of brewing the fine Eighteen Li Red liquor. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, "my grandpa" and "my grandma" together write a tragic song.