Fu Ping's 2010 Interview with APM's The Story

On March 9, 2010, Fu Ping had a lengthy interview on American Public Media's The Story radio show hosted by Dick Gordon. It's one of the occasions that she discussed her life story with her own voice. The story she told in this interview is consistent with her current version, but there are a few interesting details:

1. The only three English words she knew when she came to US was "thank you", "help", and "excuse me".
2. In her Shanghai home, They had nannies for each of the children.
3. When the Red Guards picked her up at Nanjing train station, they took her home in a military motorcycle. [as opposed to car or Jeep in other versions]
4. People were getting shot dead on the street as they drove by.
5. They witnessed the killing of two teachers, including one by four horses.
6. When she was 10 or 11, she was sent to work in a "collective farm" while her sister, who would be 6 or 7 at the time, lived alone in the dorm.
7. Fu Ping had no formal schooling before 18 but apparently had help from older students in studying.
8. News story based on her thesis research of infanticide was first published in Wenhui Daily (文汇报) and then picked up by People's Daily.
9. Someone at Albuquerque arranged her visa to study in University of New Mexico. [as opposed to she didn't know why she was sent there.]
10. No mention of the alleged involvement by Deng Xiaoping in her political case
11. No mention of the kidnapping tale while discussing of her arrival at US. [might have been interrupted by the host.]

The interview can be heard in its entirety here. Or you can read the relevant transcript below:

Gordon: About 30 years ago, a college student from China arrived in the United States. She wasn't here because she wanted to be. She has essentially been kicked out of China because she embarrassed the government there. Ping Fu had a visa and a place at the University of New Mexico. But she didn't even have enough money to get a cab from the airport in Albuquerque.
Fu Ping: I took basically a English phrase book and hecticly remember some of the useful words. By the time I get here, I can only remember three. [laugh] I can't remember many.
Gordon: which were?
Fu Ping: which is "thank you", "help", and "excuse me".
Gordon: "help" would be a good one.
Fu Ping: "help" was a good one.
Gordon: Ping Fu had come through some terrifying times in China's Cultrual Revolution before her arrival in the US. She is now, however, the Chief Executive Officer of the US high-tech firm Geomagic. I am Dick Gordon. This is The Story.
[Program break and discussions of Geomagic and 3D imaging technology]
Gordon: ...Although she was born into an affluent family in mainland China, she suffered some of the worst deprivations of the Cultural Revolution before making her way to this country. When she was very small, she was raised by her aunt and uncle in Shanghai.
Fu Ping: I was the youngest and the most beloved little girl. I think my brothers and sisters tease me sometimes but I don't want to believe it.
Gordon: tease you for not really being their family?
Fu Ping: Right. They say, oh you were not born by Mom. I would go and hold onto her legs and say, "Mom, I am born by you, right?" She would say, "yes, of course." But my biological Mom come to visit sometimes. So my aunt always told me that I am so special it takes two mothers to born me.
Gordon: You bought that
Fu Ping: I bought that.
Gordon: There were nannies for each of the children. As Ping Fu recalls it, it was a very privileged life. But this was also the early sixties of time, just before the Cultural Revolution when the wealthy people in China were being persecuted.
Fu Ping: When I was around 7, I know something was happening out there and I was too young to really understand the political changes but I can sense it. So my uncle already started to prepare me for the change to come and he taught me this three friends of the winter, which is bamboo, pine tree, and there is this flower that blooms in February. So he said, "Ping you must be bamboo that you bend in the prevailing wind and you never break."
Gordon: Ping Fu would soon be tested. When she was 8 years old, the Red Guards came to her house. They took her from her aunt and told her "that woman is not your mother. We are taking you away. You will go to Nanjing to be with your real parents."
Fu Ping: There was three Red Guards. They were holding my aunt away from me. My uncle was not at home. I was screaming and crying and said "They are lying. They are lying. Tell me you are my mother." I was crying and then she cried and she said, "Ping, don't fight. They are right. I am not your mother." And I scream and I said, "You are lying. You are just lying. You told me hundreds of times that you are my mother." And she went silent. She had her hand out and try to hold me. I mean, they deprived me a hug from the mother I knew. So they just took me away. And then I just heard her saying, "Don't fight, don't fight, they will hurt you. Just don't fight." That's all what she was telling me.
Gordon: what does it feel like?
Fu Ping: The last thing I remember, she was kneeing down on the floor with one of her arms reaching up. I always remember that hug... they did not let me have. And then I was at the train station. The train was so crowded, with so many people, literally you can't jam into the door. So the Red Guards literally took me and throw me in a window and from the window they stuff me into the train.
Gordon: This train was going to Nanjing.
Fu Ping: Yes, the train is going to Nanjing from Shanghai.
Gordon: Why did they care about a 7 or 8 years old girl, where she was going to live?
Fu Ping: I think, during the Cultural Revolution, they want to make sure that they have everyone registered. So, since my birth registration is not at Shanghai, they probably had a name call or something and found out I wasn't there. And I heard people calling my name and I looked out and it was a Red Guard, It wasn't my parents.
Gordon: These Red Guards, were they older soldiers, younger soldiers?
Fu Ping: They are usually teenagers, usually I would say between 14 to 18, middle school to high school age. Some of them are late teens but generally Red Guards are middle school to high school.
Gordon: So they are calling your name at train stop.
Fu Ping: Yeah, they have this name call. They have a list of who is coming. I went down to follow them. They put me in a motorcycle, kind of like a military motorcycle. So we are driving on the street and I see blood, killing, people get shot, just driving by. It was at the begining of the Cultural Revolution. Then when I arrived, they dumped me right in the street. There are a lot of people in the street outside, looking. I don't know what is going on then very soon I saw trucks coming. On the truck there are a lot of people on it. And I heard other people are saying those are the people who get sent away. And suddenly I heard my mother's voice. She was calling me "Ping, Ping" from one of the truck. Then I saw both my Mom and my Dad on the truck waving at me. It turns out that I arrived too late. They are taken away.
Gordon: Did you get to go over where they went?
Fu Ping: No. The truck just move very slowly and they move by me. And my Mom said, "Take care of your sister." I was 8 and I remember when they came to Shanghai to visit me with this little girl. I do remember that but I can't even remember how my sister look like.
Gordon: She wouldn't have too long to wait. The next thing that happened, Ping Fu was taken into an old university dormitory...Ping Fu was about to begin a 10 year period as the caregiver to her little sister.
Fu Ping: I got led to this one room and there was a little girl sitting on the floor crying. The room looks like a trash can basically. There are newspapers, cans, broken things everywhere and it was very dirty and very dusty except this one place where she is kicking her legs. It's kind of shinny. She was crying and the minute she sees me she crys, "Mom! Mom!" And I keep saying, "I am not your Mom!" Just that one day I lost Mom that raised me and the Mom who born me and I became sorrogate Mom to my sister.
Gordon: You were 8 years god. Your sister is how old at the time?
Fu Ping: She is 4.
Gordon: Were you cared for? How did you live then?
Fu Ping: No. The first day, the room did not have a bathroom, didn't have a wash basin. I want to go bathroom and I couldn't find anything. And my sister actually knew it was outside of the building. So even though she was 4, apparently somebody took her there. So, she led me to the bathroom. There is no kitchen either. There will be a stove you burn coal outside of your room. In the hallway everybody has a coal stove outside of their room. So I kind of watched the neighbors to see how they lit their stoves.
Gordon: And you have to make your own food on this coal stove?
Fu Ping: We have to make our own food. The first few days we didn't because we didn't have any food so we just kind of starving. And then the nanny distributed some rice so we can cooked our own food.
Gordon: You were managing a household, for the two of you.
Fu Ping: I was managing a household, yes.
Gordon: How did that work out?
Fu Ping: Well, I did learn very early on to manage the household because I have to take whatever is given to me and split half with my sister.
[program break]
Fu Ping: When we first got together in the dormitory, they gathered us all to a soccer field. It's a big soccer field in the middle of the living quarter of the student dormitory. They killed two teachers right in front of us to scare us. So, they basically said that, if you dare to say anything wrong or do anything wrong, this is what gonna happen to you. One teacher was tied up on 4 horses on the field and, when the 4 horses going 4 different directions and she just got split. We were forced to watch it. That was in the first 10 days I was there.
Gordon: I listen to you telling these stories and I don't really know how you made it through. Do you ever think about that? Do you ever think about how is it you made it through and remain balanced?
Fu Ping: Back then I think the beginning was very difficult and many times I wanted to die but I had a little sister. So some, maybe the human nature has this instincts because she keeps calling me Mom. And because I had good Mom took care of me so somehow I felt that I had the responsibility for her. My mother also said on the truck to take care of your sister. I was already 8 and I was already being educated as a Confucian  If she wasn't there I probably would have done something stupid and get killed or something. I felt the responsibility for her. I think that was one. The second thing I made it a little easier was it was not just us. There was a lot of us. So there were like, probably, 50, 60 of us in the dormitory  And there was certain comfort on other people suffer the same way you suffer -- I don't know what it is.
Gordon: There was some time later when the Red Guards threw Ping Fu's sister into a pond. Ping went in to get her. Ping said that that so infuriated the Red Guard that they took her off to a soccer field where she was so brutally gang-raped that she passed out. She woke up in a little clinic that was nearby. The amazing thing is that Ping can still look back on some moments of that time and laugh. When she was 10 or 11, Ping was sent to a collective farm. Her sister stayed at home in their dorm room.
Fu Ping: So the first few years, if I have anything nice I will bring it home and she will always try to fight to get more. She was always so hungry and bored. I remember she will...once a week I will bring a little bit meat or egg. Usually we just had vegetables and rice. And I also learned how to pick wild vegetables. And whenever I have meat, she would drop her saliva in there, think that I will be grossed out so. Basically she will go like "Oh, it's so good" and then spit on it, having her saliva dripping in it.
Gordon: hoping that you would not want to have it.
Fu Ping: Right. I had the worst food so I didn't care. [laugh] Her saliva is just fine. [laugh] So that didn't work. Later, when we grew older, we would talk about this. That's when she told me. She said, I was hoping you would gross-out so I can have more. It didn't work!
Gordon: This life went on until Ping Fu was 18. There was no formal school but the older students and intellectuals were also locked out by the government who would work with the younger children. By the late seventies, Ping was able to take the required test to make it into a university. She studied literature and she did well. Ping might have avoided further trouble but for her thesis in her senior year she happened to choose a subject that landed her in serious trouble. This was the time when China's one-child policy. Most parents wanted a son and Ping's work explored the killing of infant girls.
Fu Ping: I heard whims of people are killing baby girls in the countryside. Of course I understand in China the farmers want boys. So I thought that would be a good one to pick as a thesis to do a report on that. Because it is not political. That's why I thought. Because I didn't dare to do any subject that is political. But what really got me in trouble was the teacher actually took some of what I wrote and submitted to the newspaper because everybody had good intention of calling for a stop
Gordon: So was this a college paper or was it the People's Daily?
Fu Ping: This was.. People's Daily picked it up from a different newspaper, the Shanghai Wenhui Daily, which is the biggest newspaper in Shanghai at the time. And People's Daily supported it too so they re-reported the same thing.
Gordon: But this is the paper that belongs to the Communist Party. So if they are embracing your research you must think this is great.
Fu Ping: Yeah, well, at the time there is no authorship. When China is just coming out of Communist so newspapers usually just says what the editor says. It doesn't say who reports it. So this is the first time the Communist Party admited there is a wide-spread killing. It's in 1981. All the newspapers picked it up and UN started sanction on China for human rights violation. That's when nobody wanted to say they did it. So it goes down to look for the scapegoat as where the source come from.
Gordon: So what happens to you?
Fu Ping: I was on campus one day and somebody put a black bag over me and literally carried me like a sack and put me in a car and driven some distance. I was only in a jail in a room where there was no light, no food, no water. For 3 days. No explanation of why I was arrested. I thought, oh my God, I am dead. But it is sad to me now my life has just turned around. Because I absolutely loved to be in a university and loved the learning. It seemed to me my life has turned around and China is changing. I didn't understand it but then I lived so many years with so many things that are not understandable. So many people got killed with no reason. So it wasn't even that strange to me.
Gordon: Ping Fu only spent a few days in that jail but when she was released she was told to leave the country. Her father was able to get her a visa that would allow her to study at the University of New Mexico. She was never even been in a plane. She spoke no English. She landed in Albuquerque but got not enough money to take a taxi to the university.
Fu Ping: That was actually the first time the reality set in. Because when I came over, it was fun while in the airplane. First ride, smiling stewardess who takes care of me, first time to feel air conditioning, constant temperature. I mean, everything was new, everything was exciting. And then in Albuquerque at the airport suddenly I got hit that I didn't know where to go and I have no money. I don't even know how to get to the university. The guy who helped to get my visa has left the city. I have one suitcase and that's all my belongs in there. Just cloths and some towers and things like that. I sat on that suitcase and cried. I don't know what to do. [laugh]
Gordon: in the airport?
Fu Ping: I sat outside of the airport and [unclear]
Gordon: When you newly arrived in the west, was there one person you met or one thing that made you think, OK I can do all right here?
Fu Ping: Yeah, I was waitressing in a restaurant and I met this black waitress -- her name is Alba -- she of course told me a lot about black history, the discrimination, civil war. So we had a debate on who is more black whether black by skin or black by genes. We were friends and she was always trying to help me whenever she sees I may be discriminated by the restaurant manager because I was too nice or I didn't know the rules. She will stand up for me. And once she found out that I was riding my bike 45 minutes each way to the restaurant on top of my study she insisted to give me a ride every day including on her day off. I was so very much touched by her kindness and she taught me when in doubt, always error in generosity.
[Discussions on how Fu Ping entered computer programming and entrepreneurship.]

FastCompany's Description of Fu Ping in 2003

Apparently Fu Ping has started to tell the current version of her story even before the 2005 Inc. profile. On January 1, 2003, The FastCompany selected her as a "2004 Fast 50 Winner" and carried the following entry apparently submitted by herself:

Ping Fu was born in China and grew up during the Cultural Revolution. She has worked to support herself since the first grade, when her parents were sent away to a re-education camp. Without formal education, Fu passed an entrance exam and earned a post-graduate degree in Chinese literature. In 1983, she was the first to report the killing of baby girls in China, and was asked to leave the country. Arriving in America in January 1984, she took on menial jobs to subsidize her computer science education and later hooked up with a high-tech start-up. In the early 1990s, Fu joined the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where she started the Mosaic project that led to Netscape. In 1996, she and Herbert Edelsbrunner co-founded Raindrop Geomagic, a software company that fundamentally changes the way products are made, allowing large-scale customization of individualized products at the same cost as mass manufacturing.

Fu Ping on NPR in 2006

Hot off her extensive profile from Inc. magazine, Fu Ping next was interviewed by NPR's All Things Considered program on March 18, 2006. In this program, she provided a shorter but similar version of her story. Most of her story was actually told by the reporter Kathleen Schalch as a narrative but with Fu Ping's presence and concurrence.

The interview is available as an audio program as well as a full transcript. Among the highlights are:

Fu Ping's Contribution to Mosaic:

SCHALCH: This may sound far-fetched, but Fu is serious. And she's come up with some pretty good ideas in the past. She once led a research team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. One of the graduate students she hired was Mark Andreesen. 

Ms. FU: And he didn't like mathematics. So he asked me what project could he work on. I said how about a browser? He said, what browser? I said, well, a browser is a graphic use interface from which people can access text, images, songs, videos, whatever, and then he said, cool. 

SCHALCH: That's how Netscape was born.

It was also mentioned that she and her husband created the algorithm for the robot melting scene in the movie Terminator 2.

Fu Ping's Schooling or the Lack Thereof:

SCHALCH: That did the trick. Fu's overcome other challenges. She grew up in China, and between the ages of eight and 18, she never set foot in a classroom. It was the time of the cultural revolution. Educated people like Fu's parents were condemned, exiled, and many were killed. Children like Fu and her sister were left behind and forced to atone for their parents' sins. They were starved. 

Ms. FU: They would make food like mud mixed with the tree barks and grass. They mixed together and cooked them and then make us eat them.

The food she was describing was likely the "remember-the-bitterness meal" (忆苦饭), a popular educational tool served to the entire population. It was not intended as a punishment for children with "bad backgrounds."

Fu Ping's Rape and Political Trouble:

SCHALCH: Red Guard soldiers threw Fu's little sister into a pond to drown. Fu jumped in and pulled her out, so the soldiers punished her by beating and raping her. She was 10. Schools reopened when Ping Fu was 18. She studied journalism and spent two years investigating rumors that China's one-child policy was prompting couples to kill their baby girls. 

Fu's student project got picked up by the People's Daily. It quickly became a story outside of China, too, drawing condemnation from human rights advocates. The story Party officials had once praised was now an embarrassment. Fu was thrown in prison. 

Ms. FU: I was preparing to die, and then I was given a chance to live. 

SCHALCH: But she was ordered to leave China and never return. In a way, Fu thinks these hardships have helped her in her new life as a high-tech entrepreneur.

Fu Ping as Inc. Entrepreneur of the Year

In 2005, Inc. selected Fu Ping as its Entrepreneur of the Year and published a comprehensive report on her work and life. This lengthy profile, written by John Brant, was perhaps the very first time Fu Ping told the current version of her story and served a nice prelude to her book Bend, Not Break.

The highlights in this Inc. story:

1. Fu Ping "attended no school at all between the ages of 7 and 18." "she was educated through torture, exile, and imprisonment..." 
2. "In February 1981, without a trial or even a formal charge, the Chinese government locked 23-year-old Ping Fu in solitary confinement, in a wing of Nanjing prison reserved for political criminals..."
3. "When Ping was 7 years old and her sister, Hong, 3, the two little girls were taken from their home in Shanghai and delivered to a dormitory for the children of so-called "capitalist-road" parents in Nanjing. It was 1965, the dawn of the Cultural Revolution."
4. "Ping was forced to watch the Red Guards tie a kindergarten teacher to four horses. The Guard members -- just teenagers themselves -- then startled the horses."
5. "Ping was forced to watch another teacher be dropped head-first down a dry well."
6. "She watched the Red Guard scald her little sister with boiling water because one day Hong made too much noise as she played."
7. "Another day, the Red Guard threw Hong into a river for the fun of watching her drown. Ping jumped into the river and dragged her out. The enraged Guard members then beat the girls, and raped Ping."
8. "Ping entered the university in Suzhou. She hoped to study business or engineering, following in the footsteps of her engineer father and accountant mother, but the Party directed her to study English as a second language."
9. "For two years she traveled through rural China, visiting hundreds of towns and villages, interviewing hospital staffers, barefoot doctors, and citizens..." to investigate the rumored epidemic of infanticide.
10. "In 1980, she delivered her findings to her professor. A few months later, in January 1981, Shanghai's largest newspaper published a report based on Ping's research. The report was widely praised, although credit, of course, accrued to senior government officials. The story was subsequently published nationwide in People's Daily, then picked up by the international media... The global community was outraged. The United Nations imposed sanctions on China."
11. "'You must never say a word about your involvement in this project,' the official told her. 'You are forbidden to engage in any political activity. You will never return to China, but your family remains here. If in any way you disobey these instructions, your family will suffer the consequences. Have I made myself clear, Comrade?... she was being deported to the United States."
12. "Two weeks later, Ping boarded a United Airlines flight from Shanghai to San Francisco."
13. "She was being sent to the University of New Mexico -- she didn't know why New Mexico."
14. "Ping knew three shreds of English: please, thank you, and help."
15. "Officials had issued her the ticket to San Francisco, and $80 in traveler's checks to get her to Albuquerque."
16. "She spent the 12-hour flight alternatively staring out the window and pouring out her thoughts by scribbling notes on paper napkins. She didn't have writing paper and did not know how to ask for any. When the flight attendant offered her food or drink, Ping shook her head no, and pointed to the stack of cocktail napkins."
17. A lengthy description of the bizarre Vietnamese-American kidnapping tale 
18. A lengthy description of how Fu Ping met Lan Sharman who offered her a part-time job with a six-figure annual income. Sharman even offered her a 5% stake in his company to keep her from leaving, which she declined.
19. "She was Andreessen's boss as he developed the Mosaic Internet Browser that blossomed into Netscape -- she says she suggested that he work on a browser."
20. [Before she met and eventually married Herbert Edelsbrunner] "She had made many friends in America, but no intimate ones, and had allowed no man to get close to her. Outwardly warm and exuberant, Ping felt frozen inside."
21. "In 1968, when Ping was 10, her mother was permitted to return to Nanjing. (Her father was retained in the camp.) The homecoming, however, was far from the tender reunion that Ping had fantasized. Rather than comfort her daughter, the woman, half-crazed by her own exile and suffering, persecuted her."

Fu Ping's Original Story

Long before Fu Ping published Bend, Not Break, before she told Inc. the current version of her life story in 2005, she published a much simpler version in a book named Drifting Bottle (漂流瓶) in Chinese.

The book, published in China by the Hubei Youth Press (湖北少年儿童出版社) in 1996. In the "Author's Foreword" section, Fu Ping stated that she spent two years, finishing in October, 1994, at Hong Kong, writing it. Her parents had helped her in proof-reading and copying.

According to Fang Zhouzi, who has obtained a copy of this book, the book is not a fictional novel but a true memoir. It includes many pictures of the author and her family members as well as friends. Fu Ping herself has also stated that she wrote this book to tell Chinese readers her life in America.

But the book also contains many glimpses of her earlier life in China, which differs from that in Bend, not Break very significantly. In this book,

1. Fu Ping spent her entire childhood in Nanjing, not Shanghai. Her aunt and uncle were not mentioned at all. On Page 15 (below), she wrote, "I grew up on a university campus, right outside is a famous street of Nanjing..." And on Page 88: "This is WuChao Gate (午朝门). It's very close to my home. I played here a lot when I was little."
2. Fu Ping spent her childhood with her (biological) parents and attended school normally. On Page 15 (below), she wrote, "I remember when I was little, our teacher likes to make us write essays on "My Dream". Of course, writing an essay must be real serious and with great style. So, the dreams in these essays are always very noble. But it's different at home. One day, I suddenly announced to my parents that my dream is to become a truck driver. This shocked them..."
3. Fu Ping did not suffer hardship during her childhood. In this book, when describing that she had to work as a maid in an American family and was treated unfairly by her employer, she wrote on Page 11, "In my own country I was a professor's daughter and spoiled by my parents. I had never had to do such work."
4. There was no mention of being kidnapped by a Vietnamese-American upon arrival of US. In fact, she described that, on the third day of arriving at Albuquerque, she already met an acquaintance from her Nanjing neighborhood. She would still be locked up by her kidnapper at that time in Bend, not Break.
5. In this book, Fu Ping mentioned that she memorized English 900, a popular language book in China at the time. She was able to immediately strike nice conversations with teachers she met at University of New Mexico and was able to be placed into a mid-level language class. It's a far-cry from knowing only three English words.

Here are a few samples of her book:

About This Site

Many people have spoken up.

At Amazon, in online forums, at comment sections of every media report that still allows commenting, people are speaking up with passion, sadness, and anger. They surprised Fu Ping and her publisher who saw their book sales suddenly tanking. They embarrassed elite media personalities who chose to be Fu Ping's uncritical cheerleaders. They shocked the world... no, that did not happen. "The world" simply hasn't caught up to this new social phenomenon.

That's because these people were normally invisible, as they still are. For the most part, they are middle-aged professionals who were born in China and grew up in her tumultuous years. They have left their home country decades ago and settled into comfortable lives abroad, mostly in the United States of America. They actually fit into the prevailing stereotypes of Chinese-Americans: diligent, industrious, risk-averse and never a trouble-maker. 

When Fu Ping, one of their own, published her autobiography and conducted numerous media interviews telling a life story that is not only foreign but outlandish to them, however, they could no longer keep their silence. No, you are lying. They said.

Fu Ping perhaps made her second biggest mistake in launching a media blitz attacking them as a part of conspiracy sponsored by the Chinese government, "a smear campaign," and lately, "internet terrorism." She and her cohorts labeled them "Chinese Nationalists," questioning their citizenship and loyalty. It did not help when most of the elite media fell in line behind her, displaying their ignorance, arrogance, and racist attitudes for the whole world to see.

But the quiet Chinese-Americans have spoken up. They are not going back to their silence and "polite manner." They live in a country that values freedom and honesty. They can no longer tolerate lies in the name of political correctness.

They have joined forces with their compatriots all over the world to analyze, research, and document the facts and fictions in Fu Ping's story. They exhibit a kind of independent and critical thinking that puts many of those "investigative journalists" who had previously covered Fu Ping's story to a great shame. 

But most importantly, with their unique grass-root challenge to the elite western media, the Chinese-American community is finding her own voice, at last.

This site intends to be an archive of this historical happening.