When Penguin Canada puts one of its planned 2011 blockbuster books on hold you know something is up.\u00a0 At issue is ‘Gold Mountain Blues’, written by a Toronto resident that calls herself Zhang Ling.\u00a0 Ling’s book has gathered major awards in China and is being translated into English for release into Canada and Britain.<\/p>\n
Ling’s previous book, ‘Aftershock’ was made into a movie in 2010 and became the biggest box-office hit in Chinese history with box office receipts of over $100 million.<\/p>\n
‘Gold Mountain Blues’, however has been a controversial subject on the internet where individuals claim that\u00a0Ling has ‘appropriated’ some of the ideas, characters, plots and details of a number of Canadian Chinese writers.\u00a0 Imagine that?…a Chinese person taking someone else’s ideas as their own and making money on them.\u00a0 Hmmmm….why does that sound familiar?<\/p>\n
With the Chinese government trying to move away from its history and reputation of being a nation of commercial thieves, this is yet another incident that doesn’t bode well for the international reputation of China or of Chinese immigrants.\u00a0 Though there has been lots of stories in the business community about the unethical and often illegal actions of many Chinese business and political persons this time it reaches into actual creative works.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Who doesn’t know of China’s reputation for taking product designs and then producing knock-offs, often even with the original designers label for their own, but at much inferior quality?\u00a0 This time is a little different, if the accusation are correct then it would be an example of an author ‘borrowing’ from other’s works and claiming the creation for herself.<\/p>\n
But what gives these accusations some credibility is that not only do the accusers include Chinese individuals, they also refer to specific works, “Disappearing Moon Cafe'” by Sky Lee and “The Concubine’s Children” by Denise Chong.\u00a0 The allegations found on the internet are that, Gold Mountain Blues (written in Chineses) plagiarizes the works of well-known Chinese Canadian authors who write in English, including\u00a0Denise Chong, Wayson Choy, Sky Lee and Paul Yee.<\/p>\n
Ling\u00a0denies the accusations.\u00a0 The accusations have not yet been proved in a court of law and I’m not sure how you would measure how they would be proven in the court of public opinion.<\/p>\n