On Gold Mountain

On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family describes 100 years of author Lisa See’s family history, providing a complex portrait of her family’s hard work, suffering, failures and successes as they moved from China to the United States. Speaking of the Chinese side of her family, See has said: "Things were so fractured and wild at home ... But the weekends with my grandparents became the real center for me ... It was the side of the family I identified more with. It was fun, romantic, solid". The book has inspired both an opera, and a museum exhibition. It also provides helpful context for See's novel, Shanghai Girls. The time frame for Shanghai Girls is 1937-1957, corresponding to Parts IV and V of On Gold Mountain.