In a northern Chinese village in the 1990s, Wang Erlan, an idle man despised by the entire village, gets by on food and money by running errands and passing messages for his neighbors, causing plenty of hilarious misunderstandings along the way. Though he appears lazy and content to waste his days, he has quietly been caring for elderly people who live alone in the village and secretly helping villagers solve their problems. When a chicken theft scandal leaves him wrongly accused, his actions repairing a house on a rainy night finally reveal the truth. In the end, he changes everyone's prejudice through his actions and discovers his own sense of purpose in life.