"Chronicles the experiences of a Chinese-American family in California, beginning with the immigration of the author's great-great-grandfather in the late 1800s." image & summary from worldcat.org
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JHT's comments I read this book after enjoying the author's “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” I was fascinated by this account of the author's family - with family in China as well as California. I enjoyed the history told about China as well as this country. I enjoyed reading about a family that faced great cultural differences as well as persecution because of their ethnicity. Through it all they kept working, stayed somewhat close as a family, and were successful in many aspects of their lives.
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In the Epilogue Lisa See talks about her "ordinary" family
”Uncle’s and Fong See’s descendants, and I include myself in this, are not extraordinary. We are quite ordinary, but I believe there’s a lot to be learned from the ordinary and it’s that very ordinariness that links my family to all American families. We all had someone in our families who was crazy enough, brave enough, unlucky enough, or dumb enough to leave his or her home country to come here….We all share in that immigrant experience. ... We all had people in our families who struggled and sacrificed so that we can be here today. All of us want our families to be proud of us, and they show that to us in sometimes unexpected ways. … What I learned from writing On Gold Mountain is that all that really matters in life is family, tradition, and love. These are the things that matter the most in all of our lives, and they continue to inspire me every day when I sit down to write.”
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Our immigrants came from Germany in the mid 1800s (Boman/Bowman) and mid1700s (Baum), Ireland in the mid1800s (Cathcart & Alexander), England in the mid1600s (Holton, Judd & Ames), Scotland in the mid1800s (Allan & Fould), Poland in the late 1600s (Sodowsky/Sandusky). 
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