In the mid-1980s, an image of Cao Xinghua in the short story named Damn Food of Liu Heng, a writer of neo-realism, has attracted the attention of readers and scholars because of its complex and profound connotation. It is still of considerable value and significance for deepening research of neo-realism and Liu Heng’s creation to re-examine the typical image of Cao Xinghua from the perspective of the conflict between survival instinct and rural ethics. From this perspective, what Damn Food describes is China in the 1950s and 1960s, and Cao Xinghua’s comprehensive conflict between the process of constantly learning survival skills and rural ethics not only shows Cao Xinghua’s rare life resilience and genius ability but a successful impact on taboos such as rural production organizations, rural clan ethics, traditional family relationships between males and females, and the bottom line of human beings’dignity of living. In difficult periods, Cao Xinghua’s various overstepping behaviors under the cover of survival seem to be unimpeachable. However, when the threat of survival was lifted, all those broken human relations must be rebuilt, so Cao Xinghua’s death is the inevitable result after the shame tide. Cao’s death mirrors the cruelty of an era and the ultimate sorrow of the life of the weak, and Damn Food also points to the depravity of an era and the trample to ordinary people and the life of the weak.