This book investigates the socio-cultural, ethno-speech, and geo-historical constructs of the Cantonese collective persona during the later nineteenth-century. In this context, "Shaan" (mountain) serves as a metaphor for home, with "Tong-Shaan" (Tong Mountain), as one's permanent home in China, and "Gum-Shaan" (Gold[en] Mountain), as one's temporary home in America. These metaphors underscore the sense of loss and longing, where Cantonese identity and experience evolved and matured within a transnational/diasporic context, in both China and America.