This memoir and cultural biography spans a period of over one hundred years (1857-1994) and features the author's adoptive mother and her family. Half Chinese, half Danish, her mother, Elsa Oiesen Bement (1900-1994), grew up in privileged milieu in Korea, China, the U.S., and Europe. Photographs, family letters, stories handed down from generation to generation, and personal recollections, set in their respective social and historical contexts, document the multigenerational, multicultural family saga. The paper bears witness to a unique mother/daughter relationship and Ellerman's daunting search for her Chinese birth mother.