The Ninth Widow tells a story of a woman villager Wang Pu-tao (Grape) from an isolated part of Central China who loses her family in early childhood in a flood disaster. She is bought as a servant and widowed at age 14. Wang hides a fugitive man (her father-in-law) in her cellar and cares for him for the next 30 years, through political campaigns, famines, and various man-made disasters