Yang Guoqiang was born in the town of Beijiao in Shunde. He grew up poor, and when he was young, he herded cattle, farmed, and worked as a cement craftsman. In the 1980s, he earned his first pot of gold as a building contractor. From earning 180 yuan per month to having a net worth of billions of yuan, from being a farming peasant to becoming a construction boss and then a large real estate developer, some people say that his experiences reflects the accumulation of wealth of mainland China's private business owners since the 1980s.