Gold Mountain Blues

From the book cover
In 1879, sixteen-year-old Fong Tak-Fat boards a ship to Canada determined to make a life for himself and support his family back home. He will blast rocks for the Pacific Railway, launder linens for his countrymen, and save every penny he makes to reunite his family - because his heart remains in China.
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Did Ling Zhang plagiarize the works of Wayson Choy, Sky Lee, Paul Yee, and Denise Chong for Gold Mountain Blues? My answer: no.

The preface kind of sets the reader up to think that maybe the accusations of plagiarism are warranted. Ling Zhang comes off as trying too hard to explain how she came up with the premise for the book. It as if she's trying to convince herself and her readers that she did not plagiarize.


After reading all 519 pages of Gold Mountain Blues, as well as the four books she accused of stealing from, I'm  convinced that Gold Mountain Blues is all Ling Zhang. It doesn't hold a candle to Wayson Choy's Jade Peony, Sky Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe , Paul Yee's Dead Man's Gold, and Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children. They are all vastly superior works of literature.

The Plot
Gold Mountain Blues chronicles the lives of five generations of Fongs, starting in 1872 with Fong Yuen Cheong and his wife Mrs.Mak. Although from the dominate/primary family in the village of Spur-On in Guangdong Province they are poor. They have no land and Yuen Cheong is barely able to eek out a living as a butcher until one day he comes across a windfall in gold and is able to build a huge compound for his family, buy land... and develop an opium addiction. That opium addiction leads to his family losing their new-found wealth, his premature death, and forces his oldest son, Fong Tak Fat, to seek out a living in Gold Mountain (Canada's West Coast).

A lot of the 'plot pushers' in this epic tale seem poorly thought out.

Yuen Cheong gets gold from a couple of criminals fleeing the law. It's worth so much and the villages are so close together it seem unlikely that these criminal wouldn't go after him in search of their loot. Another example of this poor planning is when Tak Fat gets into an argument with the foremen on the railway who are trying to leave the Chinese work crew stranded on the mountain and he just happen to be carrying around a bottle of horse piss that he can pass off as nitroglycerin - the lethal, fast-acting chemical used to blast through rock. Or how about Tak Fat's wife, Six Fingers. Her  parents are so progressive they teach her to read but then abandon her to the care of her older sister's in-laws for fear that because of her six fingers they won't be able to find a husband for her...Seems contrived to deliver Six Fingers to the Fong household as a literate bride who's had a tough life.

The story is told by going back and forth in time and place. It's hard to tell what's occurred already and what hasn't. In one section the reader will learn about one of the main characters' life in 1930 and then in the very next chapter we're back in 1924 and witnessing the story from the prospective of another family member.

And then there are the sections that read like short stories. In the middle of the book there's a feeling of being re-introduced to some of the main characters.

The Similarities
Gold Mountain Blues vs. Dead Man's Gold
In Gold Mountain Blues, Yuen Cheong 'steals' a bag of gold from some criminals on the run. His family's happiness is short lived as he develops an opium addiction that eventually kills him and bankrupts his family. His wife goes blind and is forced to sell their only daughter to a wealthy family in another village. His youngest son drowns during an epileptic seizure and his oldest son in forced to seek out a living in Gold Mountain.

In Dead Man's Gold, two best friends from the same village go off to Gold Mountain in search of gold. One is successful and the other one is not. The unsuccessful one kills his friend, steals his gold and returns to China to spoil his family with his new found wealth. His family ends up suffering; his mother goes deaf, his father becomes paralyzed and his sister's son becomes mute.

Gold Mountain Blues vs. The Jade Peony
In Gold Mountain Blues, Tak Fat develops a life long friendship with his white foreman from the railway, after he saves the foreman's life. The friendship leads to Rick Henderson, the white foreman, employing Tak Fat's youngest son, Kam Ho, as a house boy.

In The Jade Peony, Frank Yuen's father gives Jung-Sum a coat the was gifted to him by a white foreman he worked with on the railway. The coat was meant to express his gratitude to Mr. Yuen for saving his life during their days on the railway.

Gold Mountain Blues vs. The Concubine's Children
In Gold Mountain Blues, Kam Sham takes Cat Eyes, a former child prostitute, as his common-law wife. Although they never legally marry she ends up being the sole breadwinner for his family in Spur-On Village, his father, himself and their daughter, Ying Ling. Cat Eyes earns her living by working as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant.

In The Concubine's Children, May-ying is Sam Chan's concubine. She works as a
"kay-toi-neu

Gold Mountain Blues vs. Disappearing Moon Cafe
Gold Mountain Blues chronicles the lives of five generations of Fongs. There is a hint that Six Fingers may have had an extra-martial relationship with Mak Dau, her servant, out of loneliness due to her husband being away in Gold Mountain indefinitely.

Disappearing Moon Cafe tells the story of four generations of Wongs. Chan Fong Mei has an affair with her servant, Wong Ting An.

The Differences
Of all of the books, Gold Mountain Blues is the only one to feature yeung fan (white people) prominently.

Rick Henderson, the white foreman from Tak Fat's railway days remains a life-long friend. He helps Tak Fat out of many binds and eventually employs Kam Ho as his houseboy. His wife, Phylis, carries on a clandestine affair with Kam Ho and leaves her entire $5,000 estate to Kam Ho. After Phylis' death, Rick confesses that he's gay and attracted to Kam Ho.

Yin Ling is only attracted to white men and tries to distance herself and her daughter, Amy Smith, from the Chinese heritage. The story takes us through a couple of her encounters with these white men.

Coincidentally, there is an elderly white nurse who's married to a Chinese man, who appears in both The Jade Peony and The Concubine's Children. Did Wayson Choy plagiarize from Denise Chong? I think not. I think this debate comes down to the fact that a lot of Canadian-Chinese families have similar stories so it's kind of hard, at this stage in the game, to come up with a story that is completely original.

In Conclusion
Gold Mountain Blues is a really long book. It's not bad but I can think of at least three other novels that do a better job of telling the story of Gold Mountain's first Chinese inhabitants.

3.5/5

Disappearing Moon Cafe

Published in 1990, Sky Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe won the 1990 City of Vancouver Book Award and was a finalist in the 1990 Governor General's Award. The novel came to my attention earlier this year when it was part of a plagiarism suit against Ling Zhang, author of the multi-continent success Gold Mountain Blues, published in 2011.

Ms. Zhang is accused of plagiarizing from Disappearing Moon Cafe, and three other novels written by Chinese-Canadian authors about the Chinese-Canadian immigrant experience. This month, I will be reading all four novels mentioned in the plagiarism lawsuit, as well Ms. Zhang's Gold Mountain Blues and forming my own conclusion.

Disappearing Moon Cafe is set primarily in Vancouver's Chinatown and tells the story of the affluent Wong family. The Wongs have almost has many secrets as they have money. Almost all of the members have secrets to keep in order to protect the family name and reputation.

Wong family secrets:

• Wong Gwei Chang is the patriarch of the family, has the most well kept secret - before marrying his wife, Lee Mui Lan, he married, and fathered a child with a Native Indian woman.
• Desperate for a grandchild, Lee Mui Lan, pays a waitress from the family's Disappearing Moon Cafe to act as a Concubine and bear a child for her son, Wong Choy Fuk. This secret is kept from her husband but is a well known "secret" in Chinatown.
• After six months of trying to impregnate the waitress, Wong Choy Fuk tells her to get pregnant by another man and pass the child off as his.
• Wong Choy Fuk's wife, Chan Fong Mei, tired of being childless after five years of marriage and upset about her husband's relationship with the waitress, quietly begins an affair of her own with Wong Ting An. Unknown to everyone, Wong Ting An is the son of Wong Gwei Chang and his first wife. (Wong Ting An never met his father, he was raised until the age of 12 by his adopted Chinese grandfather.) Chan Fong Mei has two daughters and a son with Wong Ting An and passes them all off as her husband's kids.

When Chan Fong Mei's daughters come of age and begin romantic relationships with other young people in Chinatown, the family's secrets start to unravel as the parents try to stop their kids from entering incestuous relationships. The consequences of the many secrets turn deadly.

The story is narrated by Kae Ying Woo, Chan Fong Mei's granddaughter.

This story contains so many plot twists and revelations, one can't help but be riveted.

4/5

The Jade Peony

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy was published in 1995 and is a co-winner for that year's Trillium Prize. The novel has been making the round in literary circles again of late because of the plagiarism accusation against Ling Zhang, author of the multi-continent success Gold Mountain Blues, published in 2011.

Ms. Zhang is accused of plagiarizing from The Jade Peony, and three other novels written by Chinese-Canadian authors about Chinese-Canadian immigrant experience.  This month I will be reading all four novels mentioned in the plagiarism lawsuit, as well Ms. Zhang's Gold Mountain Blues and forming my own conclusion..

The Jade Peony is set in Vancouver's Chinatown "Gold Mountain" in the 1930s and 40s, and told in three sections with narrative from three siblings.

Each section reads like its own story as a result of the changing narrators.  Jook-Liang, the only sister, opens the novel with her tale about her special friendship with Wong Suk, an old friend of her grandmother's. Wong Suk is known around Chinatown as monkey man because of his face that resembles a monkey face. Despite his appearance Liang forms a close relationship with him and comes to view him as her best friend. She is devastated when problems with his immigration papers force him to return to China.

The second section is narrated Jung-Sum, the adopted second son. Jung shares stories about how he came to be adopted, his pet turtle King George, and his attraction to his much older friend, Frank Yuen. The jade peony, that gives the novel its name, is first mentioned in this section, when Jung's grandmother "Poh Poh" tells his younger brother, Sek-Lung, that he can have her jade peony when she passes on. Just like people, no two pieces of jade are exactly alike, and each piece is precious.

The third and longest section is narrated by Sek-Lung "Sekky", the youngest brother. Despite being the youngest narrator, Sekky's section explores a lot of the hot-button issues of the 1930s. He takes the reader through his experiences of being neither fully Chinese or Canadian, the death of his grandmother, the struggle growing up in an immigrant family and dealing with racism, socio-economic and cultural differences, and finally in two of the most compelling chapters of the novel, Sekky details his teenage babysitter's clandestine love affair with a Japanese student and her death as a result of an abortion attempt after her boyfriend is sent to an internment camp.

The main themes in this novel are family and friendship. Particularly those special friendships that help form our characters. For Liang it is the monkey man, for Jung it is Frank Yuen, and for Sekky it is his grandmother. For Chinese-Canadians in the 1930s and 40s, family is more than blood ties, close friends quickly become aunts and uncles, mothers are called stepmothers 'to keep things simple', and friends from China become paper aunt and uncles in order to secure their entrance into Gold Mountain.

This novel is a pleasure to read. It's sweet, thought-provoking and insightful.

4/5

Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories

From the book cover

The characters in these stories are men and women, rich and poor, greedy and good, young and old - all Chinese immigrants struggling to make new lives for themselves in North America. Yet wherever they go, they are followed by reminders of their home country - the curse of a friend betrayed, the ghost of a faithful spouse, the spirit of a dead parent.

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Paul Yee's Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories was published in 2002. It is getting new literary reviews of late because of the plagiarism accusations against Ling Zhang, author of the multi-continent success Gold Mountain Blues, published in 2011.

Ms. Zhang is accused of plagiarizing from the title short story in Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories, and three three other novels written by Chinese-Canadian authors about the Chinese-Canadian immigrant experience.

I am reading all five novels involved in the dispute to decide whether Ling Zhang plagiarized.

Below is a brief summary of the stories contained in Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories

Dead Man's Gold
Two childhood friends, one from a rich family and one from a poor family, decide to seek their fortune in Gold Mountain.

Fong, from the rich family, decides to suffer through the first winter in order to buy his own claim, stating 'No one grows rich working for bosses' and warning his friend 'Don't stop here.' Despite his friends warning, Yuen decides to take a job on someone else's claim earning $2 a day.

Fong eventually gets rich and is murdered by a jealous Yuen kills, steals his gold and returns to China. Yuen gives his family gifts purchased with the stolen gold. His mother goes deaf, his father becomes paralyzed and his sister's son becomes mute.

Seeking penance, Yuen returns to Gold Mountain to break the curse by sprinkling gold dust over the spot where he killed his friend, and burying and killing himself in place of his friend's body that has been devoured by wild animals. To this day, it's said that miners see Yuen's pale face in Gold Mountain.

Digging Deep
Chong, the cowardly on son of a poor peasant family escapes to Gold Mountain to build his courage and earn some money so that he can make his family proud and take a wife. Too late for the gold rush, he takes a job in the mines and makes an agreement with the spirit of courage: courage will be his until he takes a bride. All goes well for several years until Chong refuses to take a bride. The spirit abandons him and he dies in the mine.

Sky-High
Shu, the youngest son of a formerly well-to-do Chinese family escapes to Gold Mountain to earn a living. He becomes a logger and becomes protector of a large tree he calls sky-high. Shu takes his own life in a scheme to save the tree, to this day it's said that his spirit continues to protect the tree.

The Memory Stone
Willow gives her departing fiance, Ox, her jade pendant to remind him of their engagement with the promise that he will return it, if he changes his mind about marrying her. Ox meets and a women from a wealthy family in Gold Mountain and decides to marry her, without telling Willow, thus he doesn't return her jade pendant. Instead, he gives the pendant to daughter despite his wife's warning that it will bring bad luck. When the child is five, he takes her horseback riding. The horse gets spooked and throws him from the horse killing him and leaving his daughter, Blossom, with a jagged scar on her forehead. Blossom's mother throws the pendant into the ocean, only to have it turn up in the belly of a fish. So they decide to return it to Willow. Willow gives it to Blossom and advises her to use it to get rid of the scar on her forehead. The scar eventually goes away and Blossom lives happily ever after, passing the pendant on to her children.

Seawall Sighting
Two young lovers who try to escape to the new world end up being jailed for illegal entry and break and entry. Eventually they are reunited on a boat carrying all of the Chinese residents being deported. The ship carrying them sinks and they die. Their spirits remain at Pig Pen (Immigration Building) where the young woman was detained and the young man tried to break into to rescue her.

The Peddler
Little Lo was thought by many in Chinatown to be slow. He didn't have any skills or means of supporting himself, he spent his days loitering and cleaning the bathrooms in the gaming halls. He wasn't asked to do this work so no one paid him. One day, a peddler wins the lottery and gifts Little Lo with his old horse and cart. Little Lo becomes one of the best peddlers in Chinatown. Then a little boy sets fire to his horse, destroying his livelihood. The little boy's parents refuse to compensate Little Lo for the loss. Little Lo dies a few days after the death of his horse. It is said that Little Lo's ghosts haunts the house where the little boy's family lived.

The Brothers
Shek and Ping, are two brother from a poor village in China. Their mother borrows from a money leader in order to send them to Gold Mountain so that they can find jobs and send money home to improve their condition. Before their ship sails, she ask Shek to look out for Ping and prays the Ping will return to China an honest man. In Gold Mountain, Ping lives a carefree life and does not save any money so when the depression hits he is forced to live on his brother's farm. Farm work does not agree with him so he tries to convince his brother to sell the farm so that they can take the money and live a life of leisure in China. His brother refuse so Ping murders him. Even in death, Shek continues to look out for Ping. After seeing Shek's ghost, Ping returns to China to confess his sin to their mother. She is happy because Shek kept his word and looked out for Ping, and Ping has returned to China an honest man.

Alone No Longer
Ko buys a cafe that haunted by a farm girl turned waitress. When he sponsors his wife, she becomes depressed, die and the spirit of the dead farm girl takes over her body.

First Wife
Lew So-ying is raising her son Jee-wah while her husband works in Gold Mountain. When Communist party gain control in China, her husband sends for them. In Gold Mountain she discovers that her husband has a second wife and two daughters. So-ying is so overcome with loneliness she decides to go live in the moment she was last happy: the train ride before she found out about her husband's second family.

Reunited
In 1955, Tong Lung is a spoiled teenager who's never met his father but enjoys spending the money his father remits from Gold Mountain. Then one day his father decides it time for Tong to move to Gold Mountain and start working in his dry cleaning shop. They argue about his father's thriftiness and not enjoying life but saving all his money for retirement. One day Tong is late getting back to the dry cleaner because he stopped to see a car at a dealership. The store is robbed and Tong's father murdered. With his inheritance, Tong buys a car and his father's spirit appears in the car. The spirit tells Tong that he was right. From that day on Tong keeps a cushion in his car so that his father can go everywhere he goes and get to experience the things he missed out on when he was a live.

3.5/5

The Concubine's Children

Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children is an epic biography of a Chinese family working in 'Gold Mountain' in the early 1900s in an effort to uplift their family's standard of living back home in the small village of Chang Gar Bin, situated in China's south. Chan Sam, the family's patriarch, and his concubine, May-ying, are Denise Chong's maternal grandparents.

This was my second time reading The Concubine's Children in less than two years. The Concubine's Children is one of four books named in a plagiarism suit against author Ling Zhang for her much acclaimed novel Gold Mountain Blues. I read The Concubine's Children again, because it is one of those books you can read again and again, each time taking something new away, but also because I want to judge for myself the veracity of the plagiarism claim.

The story opens in 1924, when 17-year-old May-ying is told that she will become the concubine of a man sojourning in Gold Mountain, and that she is to join him there. May-ying goes onto become, at Chan Sam's behest, a lowly kay-toi-neu "stand-at-table girl" in order to pay down the debt Chan Sam inquired bringing her to Gold Mountain and in order to send money home to his Chinese wife, Huangbo.

At first obedient, May-ying quickly asserts her fiery temperament and she and Chan Sam quickly develop an acrimonious relationship. Chan Sam is frugal and rigid in his Confucius beliefs. May-ying has many vices that Chan Sam disapproves of, among them drinking, smoking and gambling. In Chan Sam's words:

"May-ying is not like a lady," he said complaining that she did not know her place. He told Huangbo of May-ying's fondness for gambling. "She is a woman who is more like a man," Chan Sam said. p.85

After the birth of two daughters, Ping and Nan, Chan Sam decides to take the family back to China so that his entire family -first wife, concubine and the children- can live together under one roof. When May-ying becomes pregnant with her third child, she consults a soothsayer who predicts she is carrying a son. May-ying convinces Chan Sam that their son should be born in Canada so that sojourning in Gold Mountain will be easier for him when he comes of age. Three days after their return to Vancouver, Denise Chong's mother, Hing is born in a rooming house.

The year is now 1930 and the great depression has taken hold of North America. Chan Sam can't find work so May-ying must support the entire family (Canadian and Chinese side) on her waitressing income. When Hing turns five, traditions says she should return to China for her schooling but the family can't afford to leave Gold Mountain, they haven't saved enough money. May-ying encourages Chan Sam to go back to China on his own to build a house that the whole family can eventually occupy. For the next two years, May-ying sends Chan Sam money to build the house in China.

When Chan Sam returns, May-ying is more stubborn than ever, having got use to living on her own. She and Chan Sam eventually separate although she continues to give her a portion of her wages for years to come.

The story draws to an end when Hing and her second daughter, Denise, visit the village of Chang Gar Bin in 1987.

The Concubine's Children won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 1994, The Edna Staebler Award, and The VanCity Book Prize, and made the shortlist for the Governor-General's Literary Non-Fiction Award.

4/5

Did Ling Zhang plagiarize?

A couple months ago, I read an article in Toronto Life about a Chinese-Canadian author, Ling Zhang, who is accused of plagiarizing the books of four well-known Chinese-Canadian authors for her multi-continent success Gold Mountain Blues.

So, for this month's reading challenge, I am going to read the four books, plus Ms. Zhang's Gold Mountain Blues and decide for myself whether Ling Zhang plagiarized the works of Wayson Choy, Sky Lee, Paul Yee, and Denise Chong. Here are the books involved in the plagiarism accusation:



The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy

 

Disappearing Moon Cafe by Sky Lee

Dead Man's Gold  by Paul Yee

Gold Mountain Blues by Ling Zhang

The Concubine's Children by Denise Chong

As always, I invite you to read along and share your thoughts using the comment button below.

Happy reading!