I'm honestly not sure WHY this book was written; you get a glimpse into a Pre-Mao China, but only via the eyes of a person who was neither rich nor poor, and who wrote more of his personal feelings on the universe than letting us see the world around him. The setting was interchangeable with that of any city where the people were poor after WWII.
And, I must admit, the continual bad feelings between the author and his father made it feel more like a book written as a therapy excuse for the author coming to grips with his own feelings and less like something you should be sharing with the world.