Her husband, who was an ophthalmologist in China, now sells real estate to the GTA’s Chinese immigrant community. They came to Toronto so Zhang could take a job at Scarborough General Hospital as an audiologist. The couple met in Vancouver, at the church where Zhang, a born-again Christian, was baptized as an adult. “Moving to Toronto was a big sacrifice for him,” she says. Her husband, Ken He, a slight man in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, pops in to say hello-but not much else. In the kitchen, Zhang makes me a cup of tea.

They’re all fake, but the effect is cheerful. Everywhere I look, there are vases filled with flowers in pastel pink and white. Matching white leather sofas sprawl across polished cherry floors. We pass through a large front hall with a formal dining and living room off either side. At 54, she wears her hair in a wispy, youthful updo and is dressed in a peacock-blue sundress, a simple cardigan and slippers. She answers the door on the first ring, a diminutive woman with full moon cheeks and a bashful smile. Ling Zhang lives here in a large mock Tudor. The 401 is just a few blocks away, but these houses are quiet and isolated, even prim. The neighbourhood was built in the 1970s-several blocks of low-lying split-levels and bungalows divided by neatly trimmed hedges and 20-foot pines. The streets near Scarborough’s Confederation Park curve and loop in a vertiginous web.

A tale of death threats, tarnished reputations and literary jealousyīy Leah McLaren (Image: Daniel Ehrenworth)

The Curses of Third Uncle by Paul Yee