The Jeweler's Apprentice

Yaozu Cheng, a fifteen-year-old Cantonese boy ventures with his uncle down the Pearl River to Kowloon, where they embark on a treacherous ocean voyage to GUM SAN, the Golden Mountain. The California gold rush has lured diverse characters from all corners of the earth, but Yaozu's new life as a miner proves grueling and unrewarding. His luck takes a remarkable turn when he meets a traveling stage performer named Lola Montez, who takes interest in Yaozu's skill with Chinese calligraphy and a journal he has kept from the onset of his journey. Yaozu's journal is permeated with visions of Canton and Chinese folklore. The reader is transported to his San Francisco of the 1850s and his Sierra Nevada mining camp adventures. The chronicle is as entertaining as it is educational and picturesque. Trials and lessons of this bygone era shed a hauntingly pertinent light on the tragedies and challenges of our own contemporary lives.