SHANGHAI: Chinese readers could not wait for the official release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the much anticipated seventh and concluding book in the series, a little more than a week ago. And they did not have to.
A book with the same title came out a full 10 days before the official worldwide English-language release on July 21 — a wholly unauthorized version that bears nothing in common with the instant best seller written by J. K. Rowling.
The iterations of Potter fraud and imitation here are, in fact, so copious they must be peeled back layer by layer.
There are the books, like the phony seventh novel, that masquerade as works written by Rowling. There are the copies of the genuine items, in both English and Chinese, scanned, reprinted, bound and sold for a fraction of the authorized texts.
As in some other countries, there are the unauthorized translations of real Harry Potter books, as well as books published under the imprint of major Chinese publishing houses, about which the publishers themselves say they have no knowledge. And there are the novels by budding Chinese writers hoping to piggyback on the success of the series — sometimes only to have their fake Potters copied by underground publishers who, naturally, pay them no royalties.
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No one can say with any certainty what the full tally is, but there are easily a dozen unauthorized Harry Potter titles on the market here already, and that is counting only bound versions that are sold on street corners and can even be found in school libraries. Still more versions exist online.
These include "Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince," a creation whose name in Chinese closely resembles the title of the genuine sixth book by Rowling, as well as pure inventions that include "Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon," "Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire," "Harry Potter and the Young Heroes," "Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon," and "Harry Potter and the Big Funnel."
Some borrow little more than the names of Rowling's characters, lifting plots from other well-known authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, or placing the famously British protagonist in plots lifted from well-known kung-fu epics and introducing new characters from Chinese literary classics like "Journey to the West."
Here, the global Harry Potter publishing phenomenon has mutated into something altogether Chinese: a combination of remarkable imagination and startling industriousness, all placed in the service of counterfeiting, literary fraud and copyright violation.
Wang Lili, editor of the China Braille Publishing House, which published "Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll" in 2002, one of the Chinese knockoffs, said: "We published the book out of a very common incentive. Harry Potter was so popular that we wanted to enjoy the fruits of its widely accepted publicity in China."
The attitude reflected in Wang's comment goes a long way toward explaining not only the explosion of unauthorized Harry Potter literature in China, but also the much larger problem of rampant piracy in China, where travelers can find six different knockoffs of Viagra, without prescription, on display at airport drugstores, and where bootleg DVDs, fake Picassos, and even near-identical copies of famous-brand automobiles are widely available.
China has recently stepped up efforts to rein in the production, and especially the export, of fraudulent and substandard goods in the wake of scandals concerning exports of contaminated food and a dangerous drug additive. Authors and editors say, though, that cleaning up the worlds of literature and publishing is, at best, an afterthought.
Wei Bin, editor of the Writers' Publishing House, which investigates book piracy, said that his group's last survey in 2001 showed that as many as 30 to 40 percent of the books for sale in China might be illegal.
"The focus of the government is not to fight against piracy," Wei said. "It seems they fight harder for banned publications, like pornography, political books, such as things written about the leadership, the government, and historical matters like the Cultural Revolution, and the Anti-Rightist Campaign.
"They maintain tight control over such things, but as literary books, such as the ones we identify as being pirated, when we report the matter to the relevant authorities, they settle matters by leaving them unsettled."
Neil Blair, a solicitor at the Christopher Little Literary Agency in London, which represents Rowling, said the company was investigating reports of piracy and preparing to take action through its local lawyers and Chinese publishers and with the help of law enforcement officials in China.
"Some of these examples seem to suggest that J. K. Rowling actually wrote the books," Blair said, speaking of the fake books. "It is possible that people might buy those believing them to be part of the series, and obviously they'd be disappointed. "
An Boshun, the editor of one of the best-selling works of Chinese fiction in recent years, "Wolf Totem" (whose author has maintained anonymity), said there were at least 15 million fake copies of that novel in circulation here, compared with 2 million legal ones.
"I once even got a call from someone who said that he represented two pirate-book businessmen and they wanted him to say thanks to me for my work," An said. "They wanted me to know that 'Wolf Totem' had brought many job opportunities to country folks working in printing shops in Hebei and Shandong Provinces."
Some homegrown "Harry Potter" authors are also unabashed about their forays into publishing.
One such writer is a manager at a Shanghai textile factory named Li Jingsheng. "I bought Harry Potter 1 through 6 for my son a couple of years ago, and when he finished reading them, he kept asking me to tell him what happens next," he explained. "We couldn't wait, so I began making up my own story and in May last year, I typed it up on my computer. I had to get up early and go to bed late to write this novel, usually spending one hour, from 6 to 7 in the morning and 10 to 11 in the evening to write it."
The result was "Harry Potter and the Showdown," a 250,000-word novel, the final version of which he placed recently on Web sites, followed by a notice saying he was looking for publishers. The book quickly logged 150,000 readers on a popular Chinese site, Baidu.com's Harry Potter fan Web page.
"This is fantastic," Gu Guaiguai, an admiring reader, wrote online about "Showdown." "I wonder if Rowling would bother to continue to write if she had read it."
Another reader was even more breathless. "You are the pride of our Harry Potter fans," he wrote, adding, "We expect you to go on and write Harry Potter number eight," which Li has in fact already begun.
For all the reader enthusiasm, no publishers contacted Li, a 35-year-old high school graduate who grew up in rural Henan Province and said that he and his wife, who works at the same factory, together make about $600 a month.
That didn't stop his book from turning up for sale in a bound version on the streets of Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian and Shenzhen under the imprint of the People's Literature Publishing House, the official publisher of the Harry Potter series in China, which says it had nothing to do with the printing of "Showdown."
"You are not supposed to use the name of Harry Potter anywhere else other than J. K. Rowling's own books," said Sun Shunlin, director for business development of the publishing house.
Not all book editors hew to this strict interpretation of copyright, however. Lu Jia, whose Ba Shu publishing company acknowledges printing one knockoff, "Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire," a few years ago, initially said she did not wish to discuss Harry Potter. "It had problems of intellectual property violations," she said.
Moments later, though, Lu spoke almost wistfully about the experience. "Everything would have been fine if they hadn't made the cover so obvious, even if you copied some sections of the original story," she said. "But the cover was so outstanding, and foreign people care a lot about things like that."
