{"id":10153,"date":"2018-11-23T16:42:10","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T21:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.ryerson.ca\/asianheritage\/?page_id=10153"},"modified":"2024-08-12T10:35:28","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T14:35:28","slug":"ling-zhang","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/ling-zhang\/","title":{"rendered":"Ling Zhang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Ling Zhang was born in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, China but grew up in the small town Wenzhou. She graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai with a bachelor degree in English and moved to Canada in 1986. Zhang earned an M.A. in English from the University of Calgary, and another M.A. in Communication Disorders at the University of Cincinnati. She now lives and writes in Toronto. Zhang has published at least eight novels and numerous short story collections in Chinese. Gold Mountain Blues<\/em> is the first of her novels translated into English. Her novella about the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake was made into a block-buster Chinese film Aftershock<\/em> in 2010.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Aftershock: A Novel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Shelly Bryant.
Seattle: Amazon Crossing, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonizing decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives of her children. In that devastating split second, her seven-year-old daughter, Xiaodeng, is separated from her brother and the mother she loves and trusts. All Xiaodeng remembers of the fateful morning is betrayal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty years later, Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer living in Canada with a caring husband and daughter. However, her newfound fame and success do little to cover the deep wounds that disrupt her life, time and again, and edge her toward a breaking point. Xiaodeng realizes the only path toward healing is to return to Tangshan, find her mother, and get closure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spanning three decades of the emotional and cultural aftershocks of disaster, Zhang Ling\u2019s intimate epic explores the damage of guilt, the healing pull of family, and the hope of one woman who, after so many years, still longs to be saved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gold Mountain Blues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Translation by Nicky Harman.
Toronto: Viking Canada, 2011.
PS8599 .H36 G65 2011<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n

Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything \u2014 the clouds in the winter sky, the \u201cfirework\u201d display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gold Mountain Blues<\/em> is a rich saga chronicling the lives of five generations of a Chinese family from Guangdong Province, which are transformed by the promise of a better life in Gold Mountain, the Chinese name for Canada\u2019s majestic West Coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Single Swallow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Shelly Bryant.
Seattle: Amazon Crossing, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n

Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything \u2014 the clouds in the winter sky, the \u201cfirework\u201d display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the day of the historic 1945 Jewel Voice Broadcast\u2014in which Emperor Hirohito announced Japan\u2019s surrender to the Allied forces, bringing an end to World War II\u2014three men, flush with jubilation, made a pact. After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. It\u2019s where they had fought\u2014and survived\u2014a war that shook the world and changed their own lives in unimaginable ways. Now, seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by American missionary Pastor Billy, brash gunner\u2019s mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that\u2019s missing is Ah Yan\u2014also known as Swallow\u2014the girl each man loved, each in his own profound way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they unravel their personal stories of the war, and of the woman who touched them so deeply during that unforgiving time, the story of Ah Yan\u2019s life begins to take shape, woven into view by their memories. A woman who had suffered unspeakable atrocities, and yet found the grace and dignity to survive, she\u2019d been the one to bring them together. And it is her spark of humanity, still burning brightly, that gives these ghosts of the past the courage to look back on everything they endured and remember the woman they lost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Where Waters Meet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Seattle: Amazon Crossing, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller\u2019s mother, Rain, didn\u2019t live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix\u2019s life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain\u2019s unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Struggling with the loss, Phoenix comes across her mother\u2019s suitcase\u2015a memory box Rain had brought from home. Inside, Phoenix finds two old photographs and a decorative bottle holding a crystallized powder. Her auntie Mei tells her these missing pieces of her mother\u2019s early life can only be explained when they meet, and so, clutching her mother\u2019s ashes, Phoenix boards a plane for China. What at first seems like a daughter\u2019s quest to uncover a mother\u2019s secrets becomes a startling journey of self-discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Told across decades and continents, Zhang Ling\u2019s exquisite novel is a tale of extraordinary courage and survival. It illuminates the resilience of humanity, the brutalities of life, the secrets we keep and those we share, and the driving forces it takes to survive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Anthology (Short stories)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toward the North: Stories by Chinese Canadian Writers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Hua Laura Wu, Xueqing Xu, and Corinne Bieman Davies.
Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PS8235.C55 T69 2018<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zhang, Ling. “The Abandoned Cat.” Translated by Zo\u00eb S. Roy, 32-47.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zhang, Ling. “Toward the North.” Translated by Zo\u00eb S. Roy, 212-281.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Penguin Random House Canada<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ling Zhang was born in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, China but grew up in the small town Wenzhou. She graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai with a bachelor degree in English and moved to Canada in 1986. Zhang earned an … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10153","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10153"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18544,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10153\/revisions\/18544"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}