What is the importance of the village in the novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia?

The village is one of many along a foul and polluted river, and is where you are born and spend the early part of your childhood. It is your childhood in this place which compels you to want to become rich so you will never have to return or live in the same way again. Your home village is full of much sadness, for your father spends most of each year away in the city, earning enough money to support you and your family. It is only when your father begins to save enough and earn enough that he can just barely afford to bring you and the rest of the family to the city. You do not never look back with fondness on the village where you grew up, and instead only look back on it with fear of returning.