When his drinking buddy and long-time co-worker Liu Quanyou (Hong Qiwen) drops dead during a jovial session of imbibing, fifty-something working-class stiff Zhao (Zhao) vows to transport his friend's corpse to its final resting place in director Zhang Yang's gently philosophical road comedy. Though he had planned to simply cart Liu's corpse across the countryside via the local bus route, Zhao's simple plan is quickly thwarted when a gang of bandits hold up the bus. Despite having the calm of mind to talk the gang leader (Guo Degang) out of following through with the robbery, Zhao finds his plan backfiring when his fellow passengers become so unsettled with his cargo that they promptly kick him off of the bus. When a sympathetic truck driver (Hu Jun) spots Zhao carting the unwieldy cadaver on his back, he kindly offers to give the struggling man a lift before suffering an impromptu emotional breakdown. With miles to go before he reaches his destination, Zhao must resort to a series of unconventional methods to ensure that Liu receives a proper sendoff. Along the way Zhao will meet such eccentrics as a wealthy recluse who's planning his own funeral (Wu Ma), a brutish roadside restaurateur (Liu Jinshan), an optimistic cyclist (Xia Yu) traveling to Tibet, and a family of bee-keepers (Chen Ying and Guo Tao) who have turned their backs on modern society.