llqever. This fall, Penguin Canada released an English translation of her sprawling historical epic Gold Mountain Blues. Thebook is her first novel to be translated. It spans from

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TllE STREETS llEtR SCIRB0R0UGI|'S Confederation Park curve andloop in a vertiginous web. The neighbourhood was built in thelg7os-several blocks of low-lying split-levels and bungalowsdivided by neatly trimmed hedges and zo-foot pines. The 4or isjust a few blocks away, but these houses are quiet and isolated, evenprim. Ling Zhang lives here in a large mock Tudor. She answersthe door on the first ring, a diminutive woman with full mooncheeks and a bashful smile. At 54, she wears her hair in a wispy,youthful updo and is dressed in a peacock-blue sundress, a simplecardigan and slippers. The house is immaculate. We pass througha large front hall with a formal dining and living room off eitherside. Matching white leather sofas sprawl across polished cherryfloors. Everywhere I look, there are vases filled with flowers inpastel pink and white. They're all fake, but the effect is cheerful.

In the kitchen, Zhang makes me a cup of tea. Her husband, KenHe, a slight man in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, pops in to say hello-but not much else. Zhang explains his English isn't great. "Movingto Toronto was a big sacrifice for him," she says. The couple met inVancouver, at the church where Zhang, a born-again Christian,was baptized as an adult. They came to Toronto so Zhang couldtake ajob at Scarborough General Hospital as an audiologist. Herhusband, who was an ophthalmologist in China, now sells realestate to the GTAs Chinese immigrant community.

Until recently, Zhang made her living treating patients for hearingloss, but in zoto she quit to concentrate full-time on her writing. Sheis the author ofnine Chinese language books, including the bestsellerAftershock, about the t9Z6 earthquake in Tangshan. A government-sponsored film adaptation ofthebookbrought in $roo million at thebox office in China, becoming the highest-grossing Chinese movieever. This fall, Penguin Canada released an English translation ofher sprawling historical epic Gold Mountain Blues. Thebook is herfirst novel to be translated. It spans from rBTz to the present andtells the story of five generations of a Chinese family who came towork, live and eventually settle in Canada. At over 5oo pages, it'san ambitious book, both in subject matter and in heft.

The novel became a bestseller and critical hit in China and wona number of awards. The TV and film rights were optioned, andforeign rights sold in tz countries. Its Canadian publishers arehoping it will become the first East-West crossover bestseller. Lastyear, a panel discussion devoted to Zhang's books was held at aninternational symposium on Chinese-Canadian literature at YorkUniversity. Xueqing Xu, one ofthe organizing professors, describedGold Mountain Blues to me as "a milestone in Chinese-Canadianliterature in its scope, depth and characterization."

6z ronoNro LIFI' Januar! 2012

Thus far, the novel has proven Ling Zhang's personal goldmountain-a financial and reputational game changer in a literarycareer that had been restricted to China and Taiwan. But as theold Chinese proverb goes, ifyou go up the mountain too often, youwill eventually encounter the tiger. In Zhang's case, the meta-phorical beast is a wave of allegations, which started in the Chineseblogosphere and made its way across the globe,thatGold MounteinBlues plagiarizes Denise Chong, Sky Lee, Wayson Choy and PaulYee-four of this country's most established Chinese-Canadianwriters. In October, Lee, Choy and Yee launched a civil claim foralmost $ro million in damages against Penguin Canada, Zhangand the book's translator, Nicky Harman, which also demandsthat the book be pulled from the shelves and pulped.

Whatever happens, it's difficult to imagine a positive outcomefor Zhang. Plagiarism is the most serious professional allegationa writer can face, an accusation that produces an instant and lin-gering stain on even the most sterling literary reputation.

ZllAl{G IIAS B0Rll lll 1957 and grew up in Wenzhou, a port city on theEast China Sea,5oo kilometres south ofShanghai. By Chinesestandards it was a small metropolis (today the population hoversat just over nine million). Back then, it was a culturally isolatedcity, accessible only by sea, with no trains or bus routes in or outofthe surrounding mountainous countryside. Shanghai, the clos-est major centre, was a 24-hour boat ride away. Zhang has an earlychildhood memory of staring down the Oujiang River and think-ing that wherever it stopped the world must end. "The fact thatI couldn't go anywhere or see anything outside my city helped mehave a vivid imagination," she says.

Zhang was nine years old when Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolu-tion swept China. Her parents were both young revolutionaries,and she remembers it as a time of great optimism. Sitting at herkitchen table, Zhang shows me a black and white photo of herparents, a bright-faced young married couple in stiffLeninist col-lars. "Look how full ofhope their eyes are," she says. Zhang'smother was an accountant, and her father became a lawyer for theregime, after being trained by the Russians. His job was to pros-ecute those apprehended by the state.

Soon, of course, Mao's utopian dream disintegrated into a night-mare. Paranoia gripped China as suspected traitors were cartedoff to jail without trial. Zhang's grandfather was arrested as acounter-revolutionary and died in prison at 25. Her family waswatched extra closely. When Zhang was ro, the police arrested herfather, who was detained for a year and a half.

Zhang's family was poor but not starving. Rice was rationed,and Zhang remembers a constant feeling of low-level hunger. Theylived in a two-room company apartment. Every day Ling and herbrother, Zuowei, carried buckets of drinking water home from thecity tap. There was no bathroom, only a chamber pot and a basinforwashingbehind a curtain in the corner. "Everyone in the housecould hear and smell everything," she says. "It was embamassingwhen we had guests."

A sickly child, Zhang was not allowed to play sports or runaround with her classmates after school. She describes herselfasa lonely kid who preferred the company of adults to children. Mostliterature was banned by the regime, but secret novels sometimescirculated. Zhang recalls devouring a rudimentary Chinese transla-tion of Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami. Another time she copied outa romance noveltitled,LadJ) in the Touerwordfor word before pass-ing it on. "That way, I could read and re-read it as often as I wanted,"

she says. In order to avoid being relocated to the countryside and"re-educated" by the state (mandatory practice for all high schoolgraduates at the time), Zhang quit school at age 16 and found ajobworking as a lathe operator in a factory.

Whenever she could, she would get into bed, wrap herself in awool blanket and surreptitiously listen to an English languagelesson on the shortwave radio service broadcast Voice of America.She would learn a new sentence ("What's the temperature today?,'"Do you have my hat?") and meditate on it during long hours ofhard manual labour. Looking back, Zhang marvels that she evenbothered to learn English at all. At the time, higher education wasinconceivable and speaking other languages a crime punishableby death. "How was I to know that the abuse would eventually easeoff and the universities would reopen?" she says. ,,I was driven bythe pure pursuit of knowledge."

ln 1979, at the age of zz, Zhang was accepted as a student intothe department of English literature at Fudan.University inShanghai. "Suddenly, foreign language was the in thing," she says.She immersed herself in the essays of Francis Bacon and British

University of Calgary, and she completed a thesis on KatherineMansfield. She then decided it was time to find a new professionand enrolled in the speech pathology department at the Universityof Cincinnati. While she was a keen student, her academic advisorgently suggested she switch programs because ofher pronouncedChinese accent. This is how Zhang became an audiologist. Aftergraduation, she moved to Vancouver, where she worked in privatepractice. She soon fell in love with her future husband, and theymarried in the spring of r99q in a small church wedding with nofamily present. She shows me a photo of herself in an off-the-shoulder white bridal gown and a diaphanous veil. Afterward,zo friends, mostly from their church group, ate dumplings andpink cake at Vancouver's Fortune House Restaurant. The couplehad agreed in advance that they would not have children. ,.I had agreat dream, and I knew being a mother would interfere with that,"Zhang says.

In 1996, after the couple moved to Toronto, Zhang began writingher first novel, Sisters From Shanghai. She worked in the eveningsand on weekends. In the middle of her first draft. she found an

Victorian classics by Hardy, Eliot andDickens. She was also especially fondofJane Austen, Emily Dickinson andCharlotte Bront€. "We used to put onplays at school and say, 'Mr. Rochester,wherever you are is my home!"'

After graduation, Zhang took a gov-ernment job in Beijing working as anEnglish translator for the Ministryof Coal Industry. "In those days yourjob was assigned," she explains. "Youcouldn't say no." Her new occupationbrought with it great opportunity. AsChina began to look outward for the firsttime in decades, Zhang was on the frontline, working on projects with multina-tionals and travelling whenever shecould. In the 'Bos, she was able to spendsix months in Western Canada, workingon a project with CP Rail, which hadbeen contracted to update a rail link inChina. She shows me a photo of heryounger self, beaming in a hard hat infront of the construction site for Van-couver Expo.

In Canada, Zhangwas amazed by theabundance ofeverything. "I was like,'Wow, hot water, comingfrom a tap intothe showerz4 hours a day, no way!'Backhome we could only go to the companybathhouse once a week." Returning toChina was a difficult adjustment. Zhanggrew restless in her translatorjob andyearned for the arts and humanities.which had inspired her at school.

Her mother warned her that once shemarried and had children in China. herlife would be over, and she urged her toemigrate to the West. lnr9&6,atage29,Zhang accepted a scholarship to pursuea master's in English literature at the

itchy mole on her left leg that was laterdiagnosed as second-stage melanoma.Instead of falling into despair, Zhangbore down on her writing. Two yearslater, the cancer was in remission andher first novel was published. "I felt likeI'd lived my whole life for other peopleand was just getting a late start." Sincethen, Zhang has published eight morebooks in China. "I've never had writer'sblock," she says. "My problem is thatmy inspiration flows like an ocean andI have so little time. I have ro,ooo ideasright nowlined up like a queue ofpeopleclamouring to get out."

By international standards, China hasa vibrant literary market. The ChineseWriters' Association is a government-runarts bodythat pays many ofthe country'swriters to produce books. According toGray Tan, Zhang's Taipei-based literaryagent, books are usually publishedwithin a few months of delivery. Theediting process is light, and book prices,due to cheap manufacturing costs, arelow. Fiction writers generally fall intotwo categories: older literary writerswho chronicle rural life during the Cul-tural Revolution, and a younger gen-eration ofupstarts who are interestedin contemporary urban China. Zhang,in Tan's view, bridges the gap betweenthem with her ability to move acrosstime, place and culture.

Zhang isn't a member of the ChineseWriters' Association, and non-memberstend to be overlooked. The movie versionof lftershock,directed by Xiaogang Feng(China's answer to Steven Spielberg),changed all that. The film, which beginswith a spectacular and devastating CGI

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earthquake sequence that cost nearly half the movie's budget, wasboth a critical and acommercial success. The Chinese media warnedviewers to "bring a box of tissues" when they went to the theatre.

For Zhang, the success of Aftershock led to an internationalpublishing deal and literary fame in her home country. When sheisn't writing, she's often flying around the world to conferencesand events to discuss and promote her work. She runs a well-knownChinese language salon, Wings of Knowledge, which includes suchprominent Chinese language scholars asJohn Edward Stowe ofRyerson and Xueqing Xu of York University. (They meet monthlyto drink tea and discuss ideas and cultural issues-Zhang recentlygave a talk on the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature.) Andshe's even branching out into screenwriting, having recently beenasked to adapt an early novella into a TV script.

A0ID tffillffllll ttutS FIRST GAilE to the attention ofthe internationalmarket at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Octoberofzoog. The fair hada focus on Chinese fiction that year, and Zhang's new novel wasattracting advance buzz. Adrienne Kerr ofPenguin Canada wasthe second international editor to snap up Gold Mountain Blues, ina pre-emptive five-figure bid (a Dutch publishing house was thefirst). The move was a leap of faith since there was no translationsample available. "The reviews were excellent, and it had wonawards in China, so we decided to go for it," Kerr told me.

At the fair, a rumour circulated that Zhang's novel was strikinglysimilar to books by some Chinese-Canadian writers. While theoriginal source of the rumour is impossible to trace, it gatheredmomentum and became public a year later on November 3, zoto,in a blog post on a popular Chinese forum. The anonymous post,written by someone identified only as'A Canadian Scholar," allegedthat "native Chinese Writers in Canada over the past few decadeshave written books about the Chinese labourers in English.Zhang'snovelGold Mountain Blueshascopied the themes of numerous liter-ary works; many ideas were taken, and most of the plot." The postincluded a detailed list of similarities betweenGold Mountain Blues.Denise Chong's The Concubine's Cbildren, Wayson Choy's The JadePeony, SkyLee's Disappearing Moon Caf? and Paul Yee's children'sbooks, Tales From Gold Mountain and The Curses of Third Uncle.A heated discussion ensued, both on the Asian blogosphere andin the Chinese-Canadian scholarly community.

Chong, an Ottawa-based writer and a former special economicadvisor to Pierre Trudeau, wasn't alarmed when she first heardthe rumours. "My initial reaction was, it's fabulous news if mybook is inspiring other authors," she said. She published The Con-cubine's Children, a non-fiction account of her grandmother'simmigration from Canton to Vancouvet int994. Deftly writtenand historically precise, it's widely regarded as the first work ofpopular narrative non-fiction to explore the early Chinese immigrant experience. It was also an enormous hit, spending almosttwo years onthe Globe and Mailbestseller list. Both Chong's andZhang's books are published in Canada by Penguin. Chong, likemany second- and third-generation Chinese-Canadians, speaks abit ofCantonese, but doesn't read Chinese and therefore hasn't readZhang's novel in its original language.

Zhang has denied the allegations, insisting Gold Mountain Bluesis the result ofhands-on research conducted during several tripsto China and Western Canada, and that, apart from Chong's mem-oir, she has not read any ofthe books in question. In 2o1o, she toldthe Global Chinese Press, a Vancouver-based Chinese languagenewspaper, that she was the victim of "a carefully planned attack"

64 ToRoNTo LIFE January)2012

that was, in her view, "rooted in other people'sjealousy and grudges."Zhang has never publicly accused anyone ofbeing the "Canadian

Scholar." However, Yan Li, a Chinese-born comparative literatureprofessor and director of the University of Waterloo's ConfuciusInstitute, claims that shortly after the Canadian Scholar postappeared, a vicious smear campaign was initiated against her byZhang's readers. Li says Zhang's fans suspect that even ifshe isn'tthe Canadian Scholar, she must be helping the blogger composethe posts.

She believes she's being blamed because she is one of the fewChinese-Canadian literary scholars in the country and is devotedto raising the profile of Chinese-Canadian writers in China-some-thing she says Zhang's readers want to discourage, since it poten-tially introduces competition to the market. Li admits she didparticipate in private discussions with other scholars about thealleged similarities between Gold Mountain Blues and the otherworks in question. But she insists she has never posted anythingabout it online.

The Chinese blogosphere is a surreal world ofparanoia, slanderand bizarre animal metaphors. In dozens ofposts, Li is accused ofbeing a "bisexual whore" and "a dirty dog" and "a headless turtle"who refuses to disclose her true identity as Zhang's attacker. Read-ing these posts, Li told me, has been "mental torture." Ligrew moreworried when she received an anonymous phone call at home froma man who threatened the life of her only son, who was away atuniversity at the time. Li reported the call to police and said shewas "extremely scared." The following day, she noticed a longanonymous comment posted in response to the Canadian Scholar'slatest blog entry. "The bad habit ofChinese fighting Chinese isamplified by Yan Li," the post stated. "She wants to demonize theimage of Chinese people at bloody costs." The poster ended withanotherthreat: "Warn you, Yan Li: donot spread anymore rumourson the web. If you insist on doing this, and continue to be the enemyof the Chinese people, what is waitingfor you will onlybe a shame-ful ending. Watch out!"

Then four anonymous letters were sent to University of Water-loo department heads, calling for Li's resignation on account ofheralleged actions in the plagiarism debacle. The letters were writtenin Chinese, but one was signed with the fake name "Chris Smith."

Yi's insistence that she isn't responsible br the controversialblog was given credence when a man named Robert Luo revealedhimself on the popular Chinese web forum Sina as the "CanadianScholar" who had posted the original blog. Since then he has posteddozens of articles on the issue of Zhang's alleged plagiarism,spearheading a brazen public campaign to bring her down. (Zhangsays she has stopped reading the "rubbish" Luo posts about her asit depletes her creative faculties.) Other bloggers allege that Zhang'swrongdoing extends beyond Gold Mountain Blues toher zott novelSleep, Flo, Sleep, which they claim was partially cribbed from awork by the Chinese-American author Ruthanne Lum McCunn.

In early zoro, Penguin commissioned Nicky Harman, arespectedBritish translator ofChinese literature, to produce an English ver-sion of Gold Mountain Blues. Harman was midway through hertranslation last Decemberwhen Adrienne Kerr asked if she'd mindtemporarily ceasing work to prepare a report on similarities betweenthe Chinese language edition ofZhang's novel and the allegedlyplagiarized books. Overthe next fewweeks, Harman read the fivebooks and compared them to Zhang's original work. In her view,the allegations snowballing in the Chinese blogosphere were "utterlyirrelevant, poisonous and horrible. I didn't understand what they

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were on about." Harman does not deny there were incidental plotsimilarities, but she maintains they were too subtle to be reasonablyconstrued as theft. She said she found doing the assessment "anunwanted distraction." She ended our conversation by advisingme to read the report she wrote for Penguin. (Penguin refused toshow me-or the other Chinese-Canadian authors-a copy of thereport, despite repeated requests.)

With Harman's assessment complete, Penguin believed it hadall the assurances it needed to complete the English languagetranslation. According to Yvonne Hunter, the vice-president ofpublicity at Penguin, "it was a very difficult situation, and we weremindful of the fact that some of the authors alleged to have beenplagiarized were also our authors." (In addition to Chong, WaysonChoy has been published by Penguin.)

As Penguin waited for the final translation to be delivered, thestory ofthe allegations, which had already been widely covered inthe Chinese media, made its way into the Canadian press. LastFebruary, Bill Schiller, Ihe Toronto S/ar's Asia bureau chief, pub-lished a story under the headline "Literary feud in China puts bookin limbo in Canada." Schiller managed to track down the mysteri-ous Robert Luo-or someone purporting to be him-in Shanghai.Luo described himself as "a businessman with a degree fromChina's Fudan University who came to Canada as a landed immi-grant in 2oo1." Luo claimed to be an avid reader who maintainsresidences in both Shanghai and Toronto. His stated goal: to defendthe intellectual property rights of Canadian writers. He also toldthe S/arhe had "the backing and guidance ofa number ofChineseacademics." When the S/ar pressed Luo for an in-person interview,

January zotz roRoNTo LIFE 65

he grew alarmed and hung up. My own repeated efforts to contacthim were similarly rebuffed. He agreed to an interview requestthrough a translator by email, then failed to answer my questionsdespite weeks of pestering.

Last March, theLiterature Press ofShanghai published a reporton the controversy by Ning Wang, a professor of literature anddirector of the academic committee of the department of'foreignlanguages at Tsinghua University in northern China. Wang'sfindings were damning for Zhangz in all the books he examined,Wang claimed to find "striking similarities" and "infringements."In his report on Paul Yee's books, he concluded by stating, "Theinfringed areas are artistic creations which are protected intel-lectual properties of the author and are not 'common materials'freely available to everyone." Wang's assessment was picked upin the mainstream Chinese news media and prompted more debatein the Chinese blogosphere.

In the spring, Zhang's fans created a new blog under the name"Heavenly Horse," which they used to defend her reputation andmalign her attackers-including Ning Wang. Wang refused myinterview request, replying by email that he felt the situation wasnow "too complicated."

Another document that has been usedZhang is an interview published inAugust 2o1o on the Shanghai Writers'Association's official website. In it, Zhangspeaks ofhow small details from otherbooks will often inspire her "fragmentedstyle" of writing. In particular, she citesEmily Dickinson, but she says of the othernovelists she reads, "What point theygave me on what effect, I cannot tell you,but overall they are my nutrition." Hercritics have used this interview as anadmission of guilt. But picking and choos-ing snippets ofinspiration from otherworks is, as any writer of fiction knows,a common part of the writing process.

The question of when inspirationbecomes theft is one that obsesses intel-lectual property lawyers. And in October,May Cheng, an attorney who specializesin copyright law at the blue chip firmFasken Martineau DuMoulin, filed aclaim against both Penguin and NickyHarman after Penguin ignored repeatedrequests to commission a new assessmentby a mutually agreed upon third party.Chengwas acting on behalfoflee, Choyand Yee (Chong decided to sit out thelawsuit, but told me she is watching thecase "with interest"). At press t ime,statements of defence hadn't been filed.

Wayson Choy, the best-known authorinvolved in the case, told me he's frus-trated with Penguin's handling of theallegations. "Why not show us the objec-tive evaluation they claim proves therewas no plagiarism and get it over with?"he said."If this were a murder mystery,I'd say some bird-like creature withflippers is hiding the body."

66 ToRoNTo L]FE JanuarJ) 2012

in the attacks against

Choy has a reputation in publishing circles as the kindly god-father of Chinese-Canadian literature. When the allegations firstsurfaced, Zhang contacted him to express her concern and invitedhim to read her book. They exchanged friendly emails and evenmade a lunch date for after the publication of Gold Mountain Blues.But after reading Zhang's novel, Choy cancelled. "I'm not an expert,"he says. "I'd like someone to compare all this with the originalChinese version to expertly verify matters, As things now stand,what can I say? Well, how about, 'We won't be having lunch."'

May Cheng finds Penguin's handling of the affair highly objec-tionable. "For them to say publicly that the accusations have been'proven false'is absolutely outrageous. The reality is, only a courtcan do that. I'd love to have an opportunity to cross-examine themon the research."

So why doesn't Penguin simply put the matter to rest by com-missioning a new report, as Cheng and her clients have asked?According to Penguin executives, they already have Harman'sreport, which they view as an objective third-party assessment, sothey don't see the point. But presumably it's also because the stakesare so high. Ifa new assessment doesn't find in Zhang's favour, theresults could be disastrous. According to Cheng: "They'd have nochoice but to bury the book-and that's going to cost them big time."

Cheng believes Zhang's alleged disre-gard for her clients' intellectual propertyis symptomatic of a widespread accep-tance ofpirated products in China. Amarket ofknock-offs has been rampantthere for decades and is becoming increas-ingly sophisticated. Many an enterpris-ing emerging capitalist has grown richby selling imitation Canadian icewine,designer shoes, Duracell batteries andTylenol. The practice also extends tobooks-counterfeit versions of bestsell-ers are available on a Chinese versionof eBay. Some Chinese writers are saidto create "mash-ups" ofEnglish languagebooks and dump them on the Chinesemarket. But as China's counterfeit cul-ture grows, so does the opportunity toprosecute the perpetrators. The Internet,combined with the increasingly global-ized world of international book publish-ing, has made literary piracy easierto detect.

Prior to the publication of Go ld Moun-tain Blues, Penguin sent advance copiesofthe book to Chong, Lee, Choy and Yee.Chong says she found the experience ofreading the novel unsettling. "Yes, thereare common immigrant experiences,"she told me. "but writers like me andWayson and Sky and Paul are connectedto our grandparents'generation of immigrants. It's our grandfathers who paidthe head tax. It's my grandmother whowas a concubine. So when we build thesecharacters, it's moored in real life. Theseare our ancestral roots."

Zhang, it must be noted, comes froma different province of China than the

fictional characters in GoldMountain B/aes. She speaksMandarin, while Chong, Lee,Choy and Yee's ancestorsspoke Cantonese. The storiesin G o I d M o u n tai n B I u es rccallthe particular immigrationexperiences of the allegedlyplagiarized writers' ances-tors, not Zhang's own expe-riences coming to Canada.Of course, this in no wayprecludes Zhang's right tofictionalize this experience.

A week before Cheng filedher suit, Chong sent a letterto Penguin (her second)explaining that while she'dchosen not to retain legal counsel, she still felt an independentassessment was necessary. She also requested that the rights toTbe Concubine's Children revert to her. When I last spoke to Chong,Penguin had offered only to meet her and discuss her letter.

Just before the claim was filed, Zhang emailed me an officialstatement of her own. She expressed her respect for her fellowauthors, She insisted her novel was "an absolutely unique piece ofliterature, though based on common events in Chinese-Canadianhistory," a history she points out is "a very rich source for literaryinspiration" and of which "nobody can claim ownership, otherthan God."

S0 Ull0'S RlGllI llE[Ep I wish I could tell you. After reading theEnglish language translation of Gold Mountain Blues,I found itimpossible to decide for myself whether plagiarism had occurred.While there are some uncanny echoes in plot between Zhang'swork and the other books in question, whatever may have beentaken from other works has been reincorporated into a storylinethat feels wholly its own in tone and style. The other writers' booksare classic tales of the Canadian immigrant experience, serenelypaced in minimalist prose; Zhang's novel is a much more denselyplotted, mass-appeal venture, which at times tests the reader'smemory with its litany of names, places and events.

Like Chong's book,Gold Mountain Blues contains a plucky, prettyconcubine who is sent from China to Canada. works in a tea houseand supports her family, though she is not the novel's centralcharacter. Like Wayson Choy'sTheJade Peong,Zhang's book con-tains a character who is disfigured while working on the railway.In both works, that character later rescues a foreman and inheritsmoney from his family.

While Zhang lists Paul Yee's book Ghost Train as a referencesource for Gold Mountain Blues, the alleged plagiarism extends totwo more of his books, Dead Man's Gold and The Bone Collector'sSon.Yee's Dead Man's Goldand Zhang's book both describe a hard-working farmer whose gambler relative resents him because herefuses to give him money. (In Yee's book the gambler kills thefarmer; in Zhang's he disappears .) ln The Bone Collector's Son, aChinese teen finds employment as a houseboy to a white Vancou-ver couple. The wife of the couple intervenes when he's persecutedby bullies. A similar character goes through the same ordeal inGold Mountain B/zes. Like Sky L ee's Disappearing Moon Cafb, Zhang'snovel contains a subplot about a Chinese worker who, while ingrave danger, encounters a Canadian woman who is half-Chinese,

half-First Nations. ln both books, the girl wears an animal hideand the Chinese boy is at one point feverish and tended to by thegirl. Zhang's claim that she has never read Sky Lee's novel stretchescredibility.

And yet, even if she has borrowed from the works in question,is there anything wrong with a writer finding inspiration in otherwriters'books? T. S. Eliot believed no author worked in a vacuumand every modern verse reacted to classical references and myths.The American literary critic Harold Bloom wrote of the "anxietyof influence" handed down from one generation of poets to thenext. Even Jung's notion of the collective unconscious-the ideathat we are all connected through common stories and archetypesflowing subconsciously from one generation to the next-wouldseem to support Zhang's right to play the role of literary magpie,cleverly recycling whatever shiny treasures she may have stumbledupon in the Chinese-Canadian literary canon. As long as she isn'tlifting them verbatim, what's the problem?

GnOUllfG UP llullllc the Cultural Revolution, LingZhang learnedthat even the most romantic theories can be devastatingly destruc-tive in practice. She watched her parents-and an entire civiliza-tion-become seduced, swept away and ultimately disillusionedby the power ofa single big idea. "Everyone was a part ofit; every-one was dragged in and brainwashed and made to believe whatwas happening was good," she says of the time. She also points outthat, against all odds, reason ultimately prevailed. Today China isa driving force in an increasingly unstable world economy, a cultureon the cusp of world domination. With her continent-spanningcareer and prolific output, Zhang would seem poised to be thefuture ofpopular fiction. Either that, or she's a plagiarist boundfor literary obscurity.

Standing at her.antiseptic kitchen counter in Scarborough,Zhang tells me that despite the difficulties of her childhood, thepast two years have been the hardest ofher life. First her fatherdied suddenly in China, and then she endured serious complica-tions from routine laser eye surgery. Soon afterward, the tidalwave of plagiarism accusations rolled in. "It was terribly painful,but it made me stronger," she says.

Her eyes drift across the room, then alight on the old photo ofher parents in their Leninist collars on the cusp ofthe CulturalRevolution. Four and a halfdecades later, the Zhangs still lookfull ofhope. They don't know it yet, butjust like their daughter,they're embarking on the fight of their life. =

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