Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds by Ping Fu and MeiMeiFox
Review of Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds by Ping Fu
First, let me admit that this type of book (inspirational memoir) is beyond my interest normally. I read it primarily out of curiosity after noticing, to put it mildly, the controversy. I finished reading the book two weeks ago, and have been waiting for the author or the media to provide some clarifications on some major controversies, but I still do not see any. I thought I would write it now before the book starts to fade in my memory.
Second, this review is a book review focused on the book, not on interviews, blog posts, articles, etc. I have read some of them which I will mention later, but tracking all the relevant information is out of the question for me. I have struggled to find the time to write this long review. I will quote the book frequently in this review to minimize any perceived misinterpretation of the book.
Third, the situation regarding the controversies is still very fluid. Let me apologize in advance if new revelations deem some of my statements obsolete. I will acknowledge them when I have the chance to edit the review (I will not polish my review to suit new events, I will instead admit my errors outright). Generally speaking, I try to avoid making any conclusions and present only my argument or some speculations
I thought I should point out a few possible major misconceptions about this book that one may obtain from reading reviews and comments.
1. The book is politically charged. No, I am surprised by how apolitical this book is. It does describe the author’s suffering during a tumultuous political movement – the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, but it describes it in a matter of fact tone with little political analysis or critique.
2. The book is China-bashing. No, I personally would not put this book in either of the pro-China or the anti-China category. If I had to, I would put it in the pro-China (at least, pro-Chinese regime) category just as the coauthor MeiMei Fox stated: “this is such a pro-China book overall”. Pro-China is a very vague expression because the regime does not represent people, so pro-Chinese people is often different from pro-Chinese regime. I would say that this book is more on the pro-Chinese regime side. Here is what the book says about the US and China: “I marveled at how ironic it was that over the past decades my two countries had grown closer together, becoming more interconnected and far more similar. China and the United States both were large nations whose people were capable of tremendous innovation and progress. How odd that, like twins separated at birth and raised by wildly different parents, the countries should turn out to be so alike when they grew up.” Here are more glowing words: “I found myself admiring and appreciating China’s advances from afar, with emotional maturity.” Many people including me can never imagine comparing a nation without the most fundamental human right to an open society where freedom and liberty are steadfastly protected in such a manner. I do not know if these words reflect the author’s genuine feeling, or are meant to serve Geomagic’s fast growing business in China. I thought I saw a very favorable piece about Fu at the website of the regime’s official English mouthpiece China Daily not long ago, but cannot find it now.
3. The book is primarily about the author’s misfortunes in China. No, it is primarily about her American journey. The book starts from her flight to the US in 1984, and goes back to her early life in China periodically as a sort of background. Because of this blending, it is not easy to come up with a statistic number about the coverage distribution of her different stages of life.
4. The book paints an extremely dark picture of China during the Great Cultural Revolution. No, the book is primarily about one person’s suffering, and it has made it crystal clear that this person was not a typical child. Her father “had been accused of serving as a spy and special agent for the Nationalists. No wonder I had been punished all my life. I was not only black; I was pitch-black.” “I saw Nanjing Father’s name with a big red X over it. He was listed as a ‘historical counterrevolutionary’ and ‘American spy.’” In other words, she was at the bottom of the bottom in that period. Deriving a picture of the whole China from her personal experience is illogical. The book does not talk about the three types of massive deaths of the Cultural Revolution: 1. Suicides (estimated up to 200,000); 2. Armed battles (武斗)(up to 500, 000); 2. Purifying Class Rank (清队) (up to 500,000) which is the most brutal one involving a lot of community executions (民办枪毙) where a low ranking official such as a party secretary of a commune (equivalent to a town manager in the US) could order the execution of people without going through any legal process. The book only mentions one case of suicide, and does not even imply the massive death tolls.
Generally speaking, this book per se is well written, and can be inspiring for those who appreciate such inspiration. My only reservation regarding the writing, nonetheless a significant one, is the back-and-forth time space travel between her life in the US and her early life in China. This frequent shuttle between two distant times may be fashionable for this type of book, but makes me dizzy and have difficulty in keeping track of all the events. I take one star off for this. I take another star off because of the incredible, puzzling or dubious stories between 1976 and 1986, and more importantly, the author’s failure in providing clarification with solid evidence on the major charges against her. I will elaborate on this later.
The theme of the book is the title – Bend not Break. The author’s Shanghai papa said: “This is the third friend of winter. Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times.” The contents of the book do reflect this theme well. After reading the book, I cannot help wondering if this mantra implies something else additionally – the end justifies the means. The first friend of winter, according to her Shanghai papa is the pine tree – “Pine trees are strong. They remain happy and green throughout the year. In the unbearable heat of summer and the severe cold of winter, they stand unperturbed.” Pine, my favorite, is a symbol of principle and strong backbone. The stories in her running Geomagic implies that doing whatever takes to survive is more important that standing firm on principles.
Since I suffered from the frequent time-space shuttle, I will review the book following its stories chronologically:
I. Birth to 1976. I will share my take on the credibility of this part different from many other reviewers.
II. 1976 to 1986. This is where I found many puzzling events and dubious statements that are yet to be clarified.
III. American life from UCSD to present. This is the core part of the book, and the least controversial. Her struggle and triumph in founding, keeping alive and growing Geomagic is fascinating and educational. The stories can be relatively easily verified. I have little doubt about them. Unfortunately, I have to put this part to the comment section due to Amazon’s limit on the length of book review.
I. Early life (1958-1976).
Fu was born to a professor father and an accountant mother – her Nanjing Mother and Nanjing Father in 1958 when women in China were encouraged to bear children. Her biological mother never wanted any kids, so she handed Fu to her sister in Shanghai – Fu’s Shanghai Mama. In other words, Fu’s Shanghai Mama and Papa are actually her aunt (姨母) and uncle （姨父）. “Nanjing Mother had resorted to jumping off tables when she was pregnant to try to abort Hong.” Hong is Fu’s biological sister. In other words, Fu was effectively adopted by her aunt as soon as she was born, but not officially in the legal sense. This unofficial adoption seemed to be fairly common in China because I personally know 4 such cases among our neighbors and family friends in China in 1970s.
The book provides a photo of the 3-story villa in Shanghai where she lived for her first 8 years. This immediately puts her in the top 0.1% of the population in terms of wealth at that time. The Great Famine resulted from the Great Leap Forward started soon after her birth, and ended in 1962 when Fu started to remember things, so it is understandable that the book does not mention the famine.
Her Shanghai Papa’s father, “an illustrious business owner who had founded a bank and taken a second wife, who was not Papa’s birth mother.” Her Shanghai Papa ran a thread factory. Her Shanghai family probably had high income and savings. She certainly lived a very comfortable life.
“I’d hang on to her legs amid the sizzle and steam and chopping sounds as she prepared the traditional dinners we enjoyed each night: four appetizers, one soup, and eight main courses. My favorite dish was crabmeat with ginkgo nuts in mint mango sauce.” This is the sentence generating a lot of doubt. I have some doubt too, but unlike others, I do not doubt its affordability. I do not know the food prices in early 1960s, but I am old enough to remember that a vegetable entree cost as low as ￥0.04 at a canteen in a provincial capital in 1970s, and a meat one for as low as ￥0.20. There are 8 (6 kids + 2 adults) in Fu’s Shanghai family. They could have bought a dozen entrees in a canteen for ￥2 or so if they had chosen to. Cooking one’s own meal was normally slightly cheaper than eating at a canteen. ￥2 was a lot of money considering the factory entry wage was under ￥20/month then, but a small number of families could easily afford ￥100/month on food. Since food was rationed, many families resorted to black-markets to make up the shortage (my family did in 1970s) by paying higher prices. My doubt is about it happening “each night”, and the logistics of cooking a dozen dishes every afternoon with the kitchenware, appliance and fuel of that era by one person. To my best knowledge, the supper in China was usually quite light in that era, lunch was normally the most important meal. Well, Fu’s Shanghai family was not an ordinary family, so the lavish daily dinner was certainly possible though improbable.
Fu has been accused of fabricating the entire story of her life in Shanghai. The book provides half a dozen photos related to her Shanghai family. I am puzzled by no reporters tracking down one or two of her 5 Shanghai siblings and locating the house shown in the photo to straighten this out once and for all. With the massive assault on Fu, why hasn’t Fu volunteered to provide more details of the villa (e.g. the address) and her siblings to help clarify the matter? Why haven’t any of Fu’s Shanghai siblings who, according to the book, adore her come out to dispute this grave accusation?
Some assert Fu’s illegal resident status in Shanghai as an evidence of the aforementioned accusation. Well, as long as her Shanghai family could afford the living expense, there was no legal issue here as far as I know. For example, housemaids are usually from the countryside, but the residence registry system in China allows them to live with their employers for extended periods of time.
Fu must have received a lot of homeschooling at her Shanghai home because “Shanghai Mama always asked me to write letters to you, but she addressed the envelopes for me”. This means she wrote quite some letters to her Nanjing mother before she finished her 1st grade. This is only possible for a 1st grader or pre-school in China if she is taught a lot of writing at home.
Fu’s childhood suffering started in 1966 when Red Guards escorted her to her birthplace in Nanjing, and that is when she learned her Nanjing parents are her biological parents. She was placed in a dormitory with her younger sister.
Fu’s biological father (Nanjing Father) “had been born into a political family. My great-grandfather had been killed during the uprising led by Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China. Dr. Sun had raised my grandfather and grand-uncle as his own sons. Then, after the Chinese Civil War, my grandfather and his family had fled the Communists with the Nationalist Party to Taiwan. Nanjing Father ran away from his family somewhere along the escape route, choosing instead to remain in China. During the Cultural Revolution, Nanjing Father had been accused of serving as a spy and special agent for the Nationalists. No wonder I had been punished all my life. I was not only black; I was pitch-black.”
My general understanding of Fu’s life during the Cultural Revolution is that she was placed in a study session (学习班) for black elements which probably offered some sort of academic classes besides political study, but she spent most of her time laboring in factories or communes.
In 1968, “A local Communist organization, in accordance with Mao’s teachings, made arrangements for all the children of black elements in our area to be reeducated by workers. I was assigned to a site about an hour’s walk away from the NUAA dormitory. I would work there six days a week for six hours a day, with a two-hour break each day for a study session of Mao’s teachings with other children… I built radios for almost a year, completing on average forty to fifty a day.” Then her job changed to making speedometers. “After just six months making speedometers, I was sent on rotation to the countryside outside of Nanjing for half a year.” She developed a good rapport with her factory suupervisor Master Wang and peasants in the countryside. “All in all, working in factories and on farms proved far better for me than my first two years of existence under the tyranny of the Red Guard. I wasn’t being abused anymore, and I had a tribe to belong to.” “I went back to factory work in 1971 at age thirteen, after having spent some time completing mandatory military service.” I suspect “military service” is a misnomer here. The official military service then was extremely desirable, reserved usually only for those with good families or connections. Most likely, it was a short period of military training.
The sentence that has triggered an outcry is “On one occasion, the Red Guards gathered us to watch a teacher be thrown head first into a deep well, and another quartered by four horsemen on the soccer field.” Fu claims this is her emotional memory.
The most controversial event seems to be the gang rape suffered by the author. This was apparently a horrific event. The victim deserves great sympathy. We are talking about a 10 year old girl gang-raped! I can appreciate some people questioning the likelihood of such an event, but I have strong reservation about turning questioning into a conclusion, then accusation without any solid evidence. “Improbable” is NOT “impossible”! Which is more improbable: gang-rape on a soccer field, or gang-rape followed by eating the victim’s liver, breasts and vagina in the same year? If you think the latter was impossible, try to find and read Major Events of Cultural Revolution in Guangxi – 1968 (《广西文革大事记——1968年》). How about the probability of a mother so hungry that she cooked and ate all of her three kids? The book describing this event and much more is available on Amazon - Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 by Yang Jisheng. Why isn’t there the same outcry accusing the author of lying? It is amusing to see the argument that Chinese people were too conservative to conduct gang-rape then. Well, if you think people in Nanjing were conservative, would you think that people in the countryside were even more conservative? If so, try to read stories of millions of teenage high school graduates sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and find out how ubiquitous the rape and sexual abuse of those teenage girls by those “conservative” peasants, especially those “ultra-conservative” communist cadres who were supposed to be these kids’ role models. Unless it is proven otherwise with solid evidence, Fu has my deepest sympathy that victims of horrendous crimes deserve.
I do not know if I overlooked, but I have not been able to figure out how Fu paid her living for 5 years until her Nanjing Mother came back in 1971 when “Nanjing Mother turned over her paycheck each month and all the household management— including budgeting, cleaning, clothing purchases, and meal preparation— to me.” The photos of Fu during the Cultural Revolution do not show any sign of malnutrition.
II. 1976- 1986.
This part has the most puzzling or dubious elements.
In 1976, “I notified my factory boss that I was heading off for two weeks, and he gave his approval.” Fu stayed with 4 of her Shanghai Siblings and her Shanghai parents. “We stayed together in Shanghai Papa and Mama’s rooms on the second floor of the middle section of the house. The newspaper agency still occupied the first section of the house, and two families I didn’t know lived on the third floor of our section.” This forced occupation or confiscation was quite common then. My grandparents’ courtyard house in Beijing used to be occupied by 5 families before it was returned.
The next day after she arrived in Shanghai, Mao died. “Blood rushed to my head, and I worried that it would trigger a migraine headache. I had been taught year after year to worship Chairman Mao. Even though I’d had my frustrations with our living conditions and the lack of freedom and choices, Chairman Mao was the absolute leader. It was hard to imagine that he was gone.” Then comes something quite incredible: her Shanghai brothers seemed to have incredible political foresight. “but I could sense that my brothers were well versed in the underground political news of the past few years. They felt certain that government policies would change for the better, allowing us greater personal and political freedom”. Please keep in mind that the Gang of Four were still dominating the politics then.
On the day of celebrating the arrest of the Gang of Four, her first brother announced “The universities are going to reopen.” Some people have problem with this statement because the universities had been open for a number of years by then, but they admitted only so-called worker-peasant-soldier students. I thought he probably meant opening to normal students, and it is acceptable. However, the foresight of this youngster was unbelievable. If I remember correctly, the slogan of “Carrying the Great Cultural Revolution to the end” lasted for a while after the downfall of the Gang of Four.
“Sure enough, my Shanghai family was right. The Cultural Revolution had ended. All at once, schools everywhere reopened— not only universities, but also elementary, middle, high, and night schools began to offer classes literally from six a.m. until midnight every day.” This is a grossly inaccurate statement. Elementary, middle and high schools were pretty much all opened by 1971, and offered fairly normal classes except with a lot of political elements and a few weeks of mandatory learning from workers, peasants or soldiers every year.
“I returned from Shanghai to Nanjing to live with Nanjing Mother and Hong in our dormitory room. Not long after that, Nanjing Father came home from exile. He looked dark and muscular, his face worn from years of exposure to the sun and open air. I learned that he had been chopping down trees and doing woodwork in the mountains along the snowy Russian border.”
“I signed up for as many classes as I could fit into my schedule and studied day and night in a race against time. I quickly became known as ‘the girl who never turns off her lights.’ How could I possibly sleep? My mind was hyperstimulated by everything I was learning: math, physics, chemistry, literature, history, geology, geography. I felt like a sponge trying to soak up the entire ocean.” I wish the author could be clear about where she signed up classes in 1977.
“Nine months later, in the spring of 1977, China held its first university entrance exams since 1966.” This is another grossly inaccurate statement. The restoration of the college entrance exam is itself a fascinating story on which I do not have space to elaborate here. The first one was held in November of 1977.
“I heard that out of every ten thousand applicants, only one was accepted to a university.” This is another sloppy statement. The acceptance rate was about 3%, not 0.01% as indicated by this statement.
“My score was above the minimum required for acceptance. Although I had been asked to fill out a form listing my preferences, I had no choice of where or what I would study. Ultimately, the government would make the assignment.” Another quite inaccurate statement. The choice was real, but merit based. Applicants with highest scores get to choose first, then the next batch, and so on. The bottom applicants get whatever left, or have no choice but the assigned major and college. “When the acceptance letter came in the fall of 1977, it said that I had been assigned to study literature at Suzhou University. Suzhou was a second-tier school, not as highly regarded as Beijing University or NUAA. My birth parents’ faces fell when I told them… ‘Maybe you shouldn’t go,’ Nanjing Mother advised. ‘You can get in trouble so easily with a degree in literature. Wait half a year until you can take the entrance exam again. You may get into a science program.’”. If the government assigned schools to all applicants, what would be the odds to just wait for another year to be assigned to a desired school among hundreds for them to choose from? I am afraid the book missed a key element of her mother’s suggestion – try to study harder to score higher next year hence a chance to go to a better school.
I heard that the author has revised her story saying she went to college in 1978 instead of 1977. Going to college is one of the most important events in one’s life. I am really puzzled by the author mixing up all these dates in such a gross manner. Did she really forget whether she participated in the historic and unusual first college entrance exam after the Cultural Revolution? I would totally understand if Fu skipped the first college entrance exam or scored too low to be accepted considering she lacked formal schooling despite she worked extremely hard to make it up.
Some use the author’s college enrollment as the proof that she was never a black element’s child because such applicants could not pass the political screening. I am not sure about this. The disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai went to college in 1977 while his father was still regarded as a criminal (traitor) probably still in prison.
From 1977 to 1989 was the most spectacular liberalizing period in the recent Chinese history. There were lots of unofficial (i.e. not sanctioned by the authority) student organizations and publications. It was normal for Fu to participate in this movement. “Halfway through our first semester, my friends and I formed a group called the Red Maple Society. We decided to publish a literary magazine composed of our essays and poems, as well as articles about events taking place across campus and in Suzhou. I was elected editor in chief … Over the course of the next year and a half, our magazine grew quite popular— and not just among the university students or in Suzhou. The monthly issues were passed around among friends in different cities and mailed out to other universities as well… Toward the end of my second year at Suzhou University, our group was invited to attend a conference in Beijing with the publishers of literary magazines from ten other universities. Since we were not ranked a first-tier school, this was a tremendous honor. The Red Maple Society slaved for weeks to create what we considered our finest magazine yet. And in so doing, we took a huge risk: we chose to include an article written by a student titled ‘A Confession of a Communist Member,’ which compared Mao’s Little Red Book to the Bible. … But the meeting never happened. The government decided at the last minute to ban the gathering of the ten universities, deeming it illegal. Instead, it was announced that China’s de facto leader, Deng Xiaoping, would receive the representatives for a private meeting… This was when things went terribly wrong. Every representative who attended the special meeting with Deng had a copy of the Red Maple Society’s current magazine in hand. Deng asked to see what people were reading. One student from Beijing University passed him a copy of our magazine with its pages opened to the ‘Confessions’ article, which was considered daring and controversial. ‘A Communist member questions his own party?’ Deng asked with his eyebrow raised after quickly skimming the article. It wasn’t clear to our Red Maple Society representative or the other students in attendance whether Deng’s comment was a condemnation or celebration of our work. Deng said nothing more.”
Here comes one of the most critical events of the author’s life. “So when the news came back to Suzhou University of what Deng Xiaoping had said about our magazine, the authorities interpreted it as very bad news and took a preemptive strike against us. The Red Maple Society was deemed an illegal underground society responsible for publishing anti-Communist propaganda. University officials arrested and interrogated all the students who belonged to our magazine group. For weeks, they pressed us to confess our counterrevolutionary activities. As the editor in chief, I was held most responsible for the trouble. For punishment, I was given a black mark in my personal file. I was labeled as a ‘Four Anti’: anti-Communist, anti-socialist, anti-stability, and anti-China.” Her boyfriend split with her. “For the rest of the semester, I endured relentless criticism by Communist Party officials and never-ending confession sessions. I sank into a deep depression.”
The book provides a nice photo of the Red Maple Society with 9 members. In light of the controversy, I wish one or two of them could come out to corroborate or dispute Fu’s story. I assume their bond was stronger than that among normal classmates.
Her next trouble came in her senior year. “I selected a somewhat obscure research topic for my thesis: China’s one-child policy … By 1982, regulations had grown so strict that they included mandatory IUD insertion for all women who already had one child, abortion for any woman who had an unauthorized pregnancy, and sterilization for couples with two or more children … At our school, officials would confirm that all female students were menstruating each month by checking their sanitary napkins. When they discovered that some women were cheating by bringing in their friends’ soiled pads, the officials began inserting their fingers directly into our vaginas to check for blood. The degrading practice made me wonder how the rest of China was responding to the one-child policy.” I have read that Fu has admitted she originally meant female students instead of official used their fingers to sample blood in their vaginas.
Family planning was certainly in full swing by 1982. It is not surprising at all that some local officials overdo policy enforcement or do it in brutal ways in China. It is possible the book’s description has exaggerations, but the theme was about right. “What I discovered was shocking. Everywhere in rural areas, infant girls were being killed. In spite of decades of Communist propaganda about the equality of the sexes, ours remained a patriarchal society. Out of desperation, some parents chose unborn sons over born daughters. I witnessed the horrifying consequences with my own eyes: female infants drowned in rivers and lakes, umbilical wounds still fresh; baby girls flushed down the sewage system or suffocated in plastic bags and tossed into garbage bins. Women I spoke to sobbed hysterically as they told me how their husbands had taken their female infants away from them immediately after giving birth, or how local officials had forced them to have abortions even in their ninth month of pregnancy. I didn’t think there was any way I could help, but at least, I thought, I could offer them an opportunity to unload their burdens and cry on a sympathetic shoulder.”
Here is another major controversial statement “When I completed my thesis in the spring of 1982, I never imagined that anything would come of my work. Unbeknownst to me, someone in my department sent a copy of my thesis to the Chinese press. My findings wound up as the editor’s comment in the Shanghai newspaper, which called for an end to the madness. The editorial comment was then picked up by China’s national paper, the People’s Daily in Beijing. It was the first time a Chinese official newspaper acknowledged that peasants were killing baby girls. The news spread to the international press, who used this acknowledgment as evidence of China’s violations of human rights, prompting cries from the UN for economic sanctions. I unwittingly had set off a chain of events that, like toppling dominoes, resulted in a worldwide shaming of my country and its new leadership.” These claims are very significant and they are so important in determining the author’s fate that I wish the author could provide a bit more materials to substantiate them.
Here is the most puzzling story of the book: “One day in the fall of 1982, as I innocently walked across campus making preparations for graduation, someone sneaked up behind me, jammed a black canvas bag over my head, and bound my wrists together tightly. “Don’t scream,” a menacing male voice whispered as I was escorted into a nearby car. We drove for hours. I had no idea what was going on, as I knew nothing of the international human rights pressure on China that had been traced back to my thesis … The government officials did not beat me or even interrogate me. They ignored me completely … I lost track of time in the darkness. After what I later found out was three days, I had fallen asleep at last, so it startled me when the door to my cell slammed open. ‘You will go home now and await further instructions,’ the official said … As he drove me to my birth parents’ apartment in Nanjing, we chatted a little. He told me that I had brought shame to our country because of my research on female infanticide, which had caused an international human rights uproar. Through him I learned that while my name had not appeared in the newspapers, I had been traced as the source of the embarrassment. I would have been in even more trouble, except no one had been able to find any evidence that I had done anything wrong. ‘You are a lucky girl,’ he said before dropping me off at the gates of NUAA. ‘If this were the Cultural Revolution, you surely would be dead by now.’”
I do not know why the author was still on campus in the fall of 1982. Her class should have been gone by the summer. I know Grade 77 (or class 81 in the US term) graduated late due to their abnormal late enrollment, I do not remember class 82 still had delayed graduation. As many others pointed out, I do not see any need for the authority to kidnap a student on campus. A simple notice or escort would have done the job. Why was she driven to place hours away from Suzhou, then returned to Nanjing instead of the campus in Suzhou?
“When I reached my Nanjing parents’ apartment, I didn’t tell them exactly what had happened, only that I had gotten in trouble with Communist authorities once again for something I had written … ‘I want to leave university, claiming a nervous breakdown,’ I declared … They feared that, given the black marks on my personal record, I would likely be sent to a far-off corner of China for some obscure job upon graduation. Such an outcome would force me to relinquish my residence in Nanjing, and I might never be able to return to a city again. It would be better if, by pleading mental illness, I could avoid losing my residency.”
Quitting college to regain one’s hometown residency sounds about right. Sending students with blacks to undesirable places was normal. As others have pointed out, Suzhou University was a Teachers College then, so its students enjoyed substantial financial benefits with the stipulation that they would be public school teachers upon graduation.
“I stayed inside for weeks as my family tried to figure out some way of helping me. They had several contacts outside of China. Uncle W was able to convince an Australian friend to sponsor me for a student visa. One of Nanjing Father’s former NUAA students had left two years prior to study at the University of New Mexico, and it was he who would secure my admission to the school as an ESL student.” This makes a lot of sense. Many students wanted go abroad then, and sponsored ESL study was one of the ways. However, Fu claims to be under house arrest then. People under house arrest have difficulty going to another building, let alone obtaining a passport to go to another country unless her family could magically predict the following event:
“A few weeks after the house arrest began, I was called to the local police station and given my government orders. ‘You must leave China at once. You are not welcome back,’ a stiff-lipped officer told me. He instructed me never to talk about my arrest or my thesis research. ‘Don’t embarrass your country again.’ After a short silence, he then added, ‘We know where your family lives.’”
I cannot think of any reason for the Chinese authority to exile a student who was not well known even locally, let alone nationally or internationally. Also, her family’s speed of securing sponsorship and ESL admission is astonishing - all happened in a matter of weeks at a time where there was no email, few or no fax machines, and internal calls were prohibitively expensive!
“However, one major obstacle still remained: I needed to obtain an official passport from the Nanjing provincial government in order to leave the country. Chinese officials did not always communicate with one another or conduct thorough background checks unless an event triggered it. I was sure that when the Nanjing provincial passport office inevitably checked my personal record, they would discover the black mark from my Red Maple Society activities at Suzhou University. That might very well be enough reason for them to deny me a passport.”
I do not understand why the authority wanted to deport a person while not providing the required permission for deportation – a passport. I thought the authority wanted her to leave because of the black marks in her record, not the other way around.
The book describes a very sympathetic policewoman trying to help Fu obtain her passport. It sounds like a secret underground plot:
“A week later, a handwritten note appeared under the front door of my Nanjing family’s apartment, telling me to be at the Five Dragon Bridge at two p.m. When I arrived, I found the policewoman and her bicycle leaning against the bridge’s intricately carved stone walls, where I had often played as a child. The young woman nodded for me to come close. With a glance over her shoulder to be sure that no one was watching, she pulled several dozen sheets of paper out of a thick brown envelope and handed them to me. She whispered softly in my ear, ‘If the officials see these ‘Four Anti’ black marks in your file, they will never let you leave China. Hold on to them while I go get your passport issued.’ Then she disappeared on her bicycle. I glanced through the files from my official record. When I saw the labels I had been given— anti-Communist, anti-socialist, anti-stability, and anti-China— printed there in ink, I knew for certain that I must leave. I was lucky that the policewoman had risked her life to help me get the necessary documents. It was a brave and compassionate act. For four hours, I waited nervously, the papers clasped tightly in my sweaty hands. Finally, the young woman returned. With a grin, she quickly took the papers from me and stuffed them back into the brown envelope containing the rest of my personal file. Then she jumped onto her bicycle, turned her head back toward me, and called out, ‘Make China proud, Ping. I know you will.’”.
Taking materials out of one’s record was a grave punishable misconduct in China. I do not understand why the policewoman wanted to take even more risk by taking the record out, and handed some materials to the very person of the record in a public place. Is it because she wanted to show Fu that she was doing her a huge favor?
“I bid my family farewell at the Shanghai International Airport and departed China on January 14, 1984.” This gives me another headache in trying to piece together all the events. She was arrested in the fall of 1982, and within weeks, she was ordered to leave China at once. What happened in the entire year of 1983?
I have noticed that all these bizarre stories of her leaving China would immediately make a lot of sense if one of them were taken out - imposed deportation; the whole story would become a typical one of a person with some unfavorable marks in her record trying desperately to go abroad in early 1980s.
Her savings was enough to cover the flight from San Francisco to Albuquerque. The money owed by a debtor of her grandpa covered the flight from Shanghai o SF.
The book’s description of her time in Albuquerque is full of puzzles or mysteries.
“I knew how to say only ‘Hello,’ ‘Thank you,’ and ‘Help,’”. This is certainly questionable. First, it had been more than a year since she started to prepare to go to the US in the fall of 1982. It was unthinkable that she did not prepare her English skills more than speaking 3 words. The most damning evidence against Fu that I have seen so far was from a classmate of hers stating Fu was placed in an advanced English class at Suzhou University. That classmate blogged about her class extensively with many photos long before the book was published. I have no doubt about him being her classmate. Fu denies any English study in college. I hope more of her classmates will come out to clarify this.
She was kidnapped by a Vietnamese as soon as she arrived in Albuquerque, locked up and forced to babysit the kidnapper’s kids for 3 days before the police freed her. She refused to charge the kidnapper.
“MY INITIAL PERIOD of settling in at the University of New Mexico was easier than I had anticipated. After the police dropped me off at the campus, friendly staff from the International Student Center, including some native Chinese speakers, helped me to establish my new life. They signed me up for English as a second language (ESL) classes and placed me temporarily in an apartment with two American sisters who were studying law. I could live there rent free until I got my feet on the ground.”
She was supposed to be a full-time student on F-1 visa. Nothing of the description fits the picture of a busy full-time student. The first year is usually the toughest even for us on full scholarship with high TOEFL and GRE scores. Her student life appeared to have a lot of spare time for working on all kinds of odd jobs. It is not clear at all how she paid her tuition upon her arrival at UNM since she was penniless. She mentioned that later “I needed to make sufficient money to cover UNM’s pricey out-of-state tuition and living expenses. When I asked around, people told me that I could earn more money as a waitress.”
As an interesting note, she slapped the face of Sylvester Stallone while working at a fancy Chinese restaurant when he harassed her.
She seemed to enter the Master’s Program in Computer Science at UNM effortlessly with no background in science or engineering.
“But when the professor put fractions on the chalkboard, I stared blankly at the strange notation, which I had not seen before.” It is not easy to believe that a college graduate has never seen a fraction until the age of 26.
Her sister Hong seemed effortlessly joined her 18 months after her arrival, and Fu rented an apartment and owned a car by then.
Since Fu seems to be a very pragmatic person with extraordinary survival ability, it is puzzling that “Less than one year away from completing my master’s degree in computer science, I dropped out of the University of New Mexico.” The reason: she wanted to experience the undergraduate life in the US at the age of 27 when she was about to have a Master’s that may lead to a decent job.
She went to the UCSD in the spring of 1986, started working at a software company whose owner happened to strike a talk with her on a beach when she desperately needed help. She was admitted to the UCSD in the fall and started as a junior after transferring credits from UNM and Suzhou University.
Fu disclosed recently that she got married in 1986, and obtained her Green Card through the marriage.
III. American journey (1986 – present).
I regard this part as the core of the book. For this part, I would like to list the following major undisputable facts:
a. Fu earned her BS in computer science at UCSD in March 1988. Entering UNM and obtaining a degree there may sound easy, but earning a degree at a first-tier university requires some real work.
b. “I had a dozen job offers, including ones from Arthur Andersen, Honeywell, IBM, HP, Xerox, and AT& T Bell Laboratories. Most recruiters loved that I had a few years of real work experience under my belt in addition to a prized CS degree. I chose Bell Labs because it was world famous for its groundbreaking innovations and home to many Nobel Prize winners.” Her transcripts at UCSD must look decent.
c. Fu was married to Herbert Edelsbrunner, an internationally renowned computer scientist, for 17 years. Fu does not have a goddess-like look. I guess that Edelsbrunner fell in love with, and married Fu because of her heart and brain. If Fu were a pathological liar as many accused, how could a brilliant scientist have stayed with her for 17 years and been extremely supportive to Fu’s endeavor? In contrary to the claim of many reviewers including some who claim they have read the book, the book mentions her ex-husband at least 59 times (maybe much more), mostly affectionately, giving a lot of credits to Edelsbrunner for supporting Geomagic. It talks about how they got to know each other when Fu was taking Edelsbrunner’s class at UIUC in 1988 – “One course I signed up for was taught by Professor Herbert Edelsbrunner, a brilliant mathematician from Austria. Professor Edelsbrunner was gifted in explaining complex concepts in a simple way. His style was exceptionally clear and illustrative, which made the advanced algorithm class an enjoyable learning experience”. Edelsbrunner showed her his photos taken during his visit to Nanjing - “Hang on a minute, Ping. I want to show the pictures to you”. “After the course ended and I was no longer his student, Professor Edelsbrunner told me to call him Herbert and asked if I would like to go for a walk with him at a local park…” It talks about how they started dating: “I didn’t see Herbert for a year. He returned to the UIUC campus and I stayed in Naperville. In the fall of 1989, I went to Urbana-Champaign to sign papers for graduation and ran into Herbert at Espresso Royal. We went to his office, where he played Bob Dylan’s album Desire for me … To hear Herbert play it, utterly by chance, seemed a confirmation of our connection. I intuitively knew in that instant that this was the man I wanted to spend my life with… For many months, as I continued to work at Bell Labs in Naperville and he taught at the UIUC campus, Herbert and I saw each other only on weekends, commuting through hundreds of miles of cornfields each time. It wasn’t easy on either of us. … Herbert proposed in the fall of 1991, the year I moved to Champaign.” She gave birth to their daughter Xixi in December 1993. “Herbert and I, that our eyes caressed each other with tenderness we had not found before.” They went to Hong Kong together. “When a temporary position opened up in 1994 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to help them build a “mini-NCSA,” I took it. Herbert came along and was offered a visiting professorship at the same university.” It talks about how Edelsbrunner helped her starting and running Geomagic. “These printers depended on 3D computer models, which I wrote software to create at NCSA. Herbert was a leading research figure in the field of computational geometry… Herbert and I put in some of our own savings to get things started … It was a rainy evening in Champaign, and the wind smashed against our windows as Herbert and I lay in bed dreaming up names … At the start, it seemed that Herbert and I were the perfect partners to found the company together. He had depth and I had breadth. He was the mastermind behind the technology and I focused on developing the applications and markets. He could stay in academia and bring home a regular paycheck while I risked everything to start the company … Although we used Herbert’s mathematical insights and elegant algorithms to build our software at the beginning, it soon became clear that he wasn’t interested in the business issues. Solving real-world problems was too messy for his academic research. He was a theoretician who preferred spending his time contemplating elegant proofs of unsolved problems while his head floated above the clouds. He declined working for the company, but remained involved with Geomagic as an adviser. He never questioned my judgment or attempted to alter my decisions. When things got tough, he always offered his wisdom and support with an air of detached collectedness… We didn’t know how much money was needed to run the company, but bills kept arriving more quickly than Herbert’s University of Illinois paychecks. Our first employees courageously offered to chip in some of their savings, but it wasn’t enough.” They moved the Research Triangle Park together. “Herbert had landed an art and science chair at Duke University, which made him happy. While I preferred to live in a big city, Herbert preferred small towns, so this area presented a good compromise.” He supported her during the most difficult time. “I told Herbert that I wanted to use our house for collateral rather than the company’s patents. I also said that I needed almost everything we had saved in our bank account— $ 250,000 at the time. Herbert didn’t bat an eyelash. He agreed to whatever I wanted throughout the crisis… I was an emotional mess and took his advice literally. When I got home, I found Herbert and asked, ‘Will you hold me?’ He nodded yes. I lay with him on our living room couch for hours, filled with tenderness.” I was surprised by how much a lady affectionately talks about her ex-husband. I figured they must have parted in a mutually agreeable way. I was stunned by the brief description of their divorce. “That summer of 2007, Herbert took a sabbatical from Duke to teach at Berlin Technical University… During the summer of 2008, as we were seeking out venture capital investors for Geomagic, I excitedly flew to Berlin. Xixi and Herbert’s year abroad had come to an end, and I couldn’t wait to bring them home. But when I arrived in Germany, Herbert told me that he was leaving me. Without giving me any warning or time to talk it over, he left for Paris with another woman. I packed up everything and came home with Xixi. That was it. Seventeen years of marriage dissolved in a flash. I felt as though I’d had the wind knocked out of me— disoriented and confused— but I tried hard not to show it… A year later, he returned to Austria and remarried. I became the primary caretaker of our daughter.” Does this need any explanation regarding whose fault it is? Fu does not show any bitterness. Even more surprising, not only did she abstain from criticizing Edelsbrunner, but also blamed herself later. “I spent some downtime considering my divorce from Herbert. We had enjoyed a peaceful, supportive marriage for the past seventeen years, but how much time had we spent enjoying life together? Like most entrepreneurs, I had labored twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with barely a break since founding Geomagic in 1997. All my spare energy and loving attention I had devoted to Xixi. Even when I did have time for Herbert, I had often used it to consult him on business issues.” She is certainly not a bitter woman. I would think she is a kind, loving and generous lady. This is consistent with how she kindly treated the ex-CEO of Geomagic who burned out almost all the cash and brought the company to near bankruptcy, then quit, and another ex-employee who sued Geomagic. A small note, when Fu and Edelsbrunner had their walk in a local park in 1998, Fu was still married to her 1st husband, but I am not sure whether Edelsbrunner was still married to his first wife. I am willing to believe they did not see each other for a year until both of them were divorced.
d. Fu earned a Master's from UIUC, a first-tier university.
e. Fu was a group leader at The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) where there are a lot of high caliber people. Incompetent people are hard to survive and get promoted in that environment.
f. Founding, rescuing and growing Geomagic has been a marvelous journey. Her own savings was poured into the company to get it going, so was her sister’s savings later. I love her quote of LinkedIn’s founder about running a startup: “You jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.” She engineered the first round of funding, then handed the CEO position to an experienced business manager but without experience in startup only to see the company almost went bankrupt in less than 2 years. She took back the rein of the company, saved it with extraordinary tenacity. Geomagic does not disclose its revenue. “By 2005, revenue at Geomagic had grown on average 36 percent per year ever since I had taken over as CEO. We had more than one hundred employees across the globe.” It has been reported that the company has been growing revenue more than 20% annually in the past 5 years during the economic downturn.
g. Fu was selected by Inc. Magazine as tis Entrepreneur of the Year. This title cannot be applied for or purchased, it is based independent reviews. The book described how much Fu was surprised by the news of her selection.
h. “In 2009, President Obama created the very first presidential National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and I was invited to be one of its inaugural members.” This was 3 years before the publication of this book. I assume the White House evaluates the candidates of these councils thoroughly due to its high visibility.
i. The current acquirer of Geomagic, 3D Systems, a $3.4 billion company, is a longtime partner of Geomagic. I assume they know very well what they are getting including Fu who is expected to become the Chief Strategy Officer of the merged company. They must check books, not resumes.
Thoughts on the controversy.
Critics of the book started with valid questions. Some of their suspicions have turned out to be true, and more may come. They deserve credits for seeking the truth.
Some critics claim that they criticize the book out of passion for integrity and truth. I take their word at tis face value without any doubt. However, there are some with the same claim but show the lack of integrity outright. For example, some claim they have read the book, but their comments clearly show that they either have never read the book, or misinterpret the book intentionally and egregiously.
Integrity is indeed highly valued in the States, so is fairness. Innocent until proven guilty is something that many kids here know well. It is disturbing to see some suspicions have turned into adamant conclusions simply based on speculations without any solid evidence.
Let us use Fu’s Red Guard issue as an example. Some accusers first insisted the second from the right in the front row with a Red Guard armband in the photo provided by the book was Fu, now they seem all agree with Fu’s annotation in the book that the second from the right in the bottom row (or the first from the right in the front row) is Fu. However, they insist they see the Red Guard armband on her arm. I have zoomed in on her arm in the photo, and unable to identify a Red Guard armband even with the wildest imagination. There are many students in Fu’s study session, and they even had a reunion in Nanjing in 2006 which the book describes in details. How difficult is it for a reporter to find one or two of so-called classmates to straighten out the facts regarding her life during the Cultural Revolution once and for all.
I have been pondering why the author has some grossly inaccurate statements as pointed out before, and may have fabricated some major events. The obvious possibility is lying to promote her image as her critics believe, but I am wondering if the following are also possible causes, though not excuses:
1. According to her classmate, she was good at writing, but mainly in fictions. Her mindset of fiction writing might have persisted.
2. The book describes a powerful guided hypnosis that broke her down by invoking a mixture of memory and dreaming. “I could not prevent the tears from flowing. For over an hour, weeping, and with my knees hugged to my chest, I watched the most tragic moments of my youth play out on the private movie screen in my head.”
The massive assault on Fu is unprecedented. There are 3 possible sources:
1. The Chinese regime’s trolls.
2. Spontaneous reaction.
3. A mixture of the above.
Most likely, it is a mixture most of which is spontaneous. Though the book is largely pro-Chinese regime, but the Forbes’ article, which was a turning point, does not jibe with the regime well for sure.
I believe the truth will eventually come out. When that happens, I would love to see a list of all the accusations against the author with marks showing which are proven true, which are proven false.
The author says she does not understand why she has been attacked. I can sympathize. However, I do not understand the reserved defense by the people who have been a part of her life. I understand she may want to protect their privacy initially, but they have already been harassed by now as she admits. I try to put myself in the shoes of her Shanghai siblings who adore her according to the book. All they need to do is to come out and make a simple statement confirming Fu’s time in Shanghai to dispute the most serious charge – Fu fabricated her 8-year childhood in Shanghai. They do not have to endorse the entire book. I do not see any risk of doing this. The same can be said for Fu’s study session fellow membes in Nanjing, her Red Maple Society fellow members at Suzhou University, ex-husbands. The burden is on Fu’s side to ask them to do so.
Ms. Fu, you have nothing to fear if you have told only the truth. If you have lied, you are enslaved by your own words, and only the truth can set you free.
(Originally written before 2018)