Fu Ping Tells her Story to Huffington Post

On January 22, 2013, Fu Ping was interviewed by the editors of Huffington Post, based on which HuffPost published a story titled "Ping Fu's Incredible Journey from Child Soldier to Programming Pioneer". It's not clear where the author, Noalee Harel, got the term "child soldier" from. It was not in the interview video itself.

The interview video is also made available by the editors. They are in segments and appear to have been edited for length. There is one segment that has Fu Ping telling her early life story, which is transcribed below. Here Fu Ping once again stated that she saw hundreds of baby girls being killed "with her bare eyes", and saw babies being thrown out in plastic bags. Plastic bags were actually a very rare luxury item in China's countryside at that time.

Cultural Revolution started when I was 8 years old. I lived in Shanghai with my loving parents and suddenly the country turned upside down. In one day I lost the parents who raised me, the parents who born me, and I became a surrogate mother to my 4-year-old sister. 

I was taken from Shanghai to Nanjing and put in a ghetto. I lived in a single room with no kitchen, no water basin  no toiletry, with my sister, and not even a bed. I was told that I was nobody. I was worse than the dirt.  

Fast forward 10 years, Cultural Revolution ended. China's universities reopened. I passed the national exam and went to study Chinese literature. At graduation, I went to do some research on the killing of baby girls. At that time, China had the one-child policy. 90% of people in the early 80s were still farmers and they wanted boys. So I heard that and I went to do some investigative research. In my bare eyes, I saw many girls being killed. I think in hundreds that I saw. (the host: how?) I saw babies being thrown into the river while their embryonic cords are still fresh. I saw babies being put into a plastic bag and throw into the dumpsters. It was horrifying. So, it broke my heart. So I wrote the research in a report calling for a stop of that killing. Little did I know that my research was picked up by official newspaper and then that got picked up by international press. International press started to outcry for China's human rights violations. That caused me to be thrown in jail.  

I flew from Shanghai to San Francisco and I had 80 dollars to pay for the ticket from San Francisco to New Mexico, which is where I will go to study. The ticket price changed to 85. In China, the price doesn't change. I had no idea the price would change within 12 hours. I was at the counter, blessing San Francisco there were Chinese-speaking agents explained to me what was wrong and an American man standing behind me gave 5 dollars to the counter to help me. That was my first impression of America. I thought, wow, someone don't even know me would help me. That taught me the lesson that, when in doubt, always error on the side of generosity.