Broken Fact: Fu Ping's Eyewitness of Infanticide

The Original Story:
On Page 254 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping described what she witnessed during her infanticide research:

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.

She repeated the same assertion in several of her media interviews. For example, in an interview with Leopard Lopate on January 14, 2013, she stated:

Yeah, I was doing my graduation thesis research and I heard that there were baby girls being killed in the countryside due to one-child policy. I went to research that and I saw hundreds of baby girls being killed right in front of my eyes. I saw girls being tossed into the river when their embryonic cord still fresh.

The next day, she repeated the same tale to Sir Harold Evans of Reuters, which cleared shocked the later in the video:

Evans: You saw babies are being killed?
Fu: I saw it with my bare eyes. I saw babies are being tossed into river with their embryonic cords still fresh. I saw babies being put in the plastic bags and tossed into garbage. 

The Changing Story:
When her tale was questioned, Fu Ping issued a semi-clarification to the Guardian on March 12:

The entrepreneur claims she was ordered to leave China after exposing female infanticide in the early 80s, writing that in a few months of research she "witnessed with her own eyes" drowned and suffocated female infants. Last month, she told a radio station she watched "hundreds of baby girls being killed in front of my eyes. I saw girls being tossed into the river."  

Therese Hesketh of University College London, an expert on population controls in China, said: "I have never heard stories of this kind. Infanticide did of course occur, but was not commonplace … It certainly was not done in public as even at that time to be caught meant a possible murder charge."  

Fu told the Guardian that she mis-spoke in the live radio interview and should have said "my research was based on hundreds of cases, and I saw baby girls killed right in front of my eyes".  

She added: "If you went to the countryside and to the family planning unit it was going on all the way down the line in every village and every school. Very few people were allowed to go to the poor areas. These kinds of things happened, and China doesn't want people to know it happened." 

But then on March 23, she spoke again at the Downtown Speaker Series at Last Vegas:

When I went to the countryside to look at that, I saw baby girls are being killed and I saw babies being thrown into river when their embryological cords are still fresh. I saw baby girls being suffocation in pillow cases and being thrown into garbage dumpsters. What I saw broke my heart. 

The Debunking:
First of all, we need to clarify two related but separate issues: forced abortion and infanticide. Forced abortion was applied as a means to enforce the one-child policy in which any "unauthorized" pregnancy, once discovered, was forcefully terminated by the authorities. This policy was carried out openly and widely. There had been many unborn babies being aborted this way, boys or girls.

Infanticide, however, was an entirely different matter. Once a child was born, even "illegally" under the one-child policy, the only punishment would be a heavy financial fine to the parents. There had never been a policy of killing babies after they had been born.

As Therese Hesketh stated in the Guardian article, infanticide did occur in China, when some parents sacrificed their first-born girls after birth in order to preserve their quota to have a boy under the one-child policy. It was not commonplace and it was, is, and always has been a crime of murder, even in China in those days.

Since it is a criminal act, when infanticide did occur, it was done by the parents or other family members in secret. It would be almost impossible for Fu Ping, an outsider from a big city, to witness any of such killings, not to mention "hundreds of them" " in front of my own eyes."

The corpses of infanticide would also have been carefully disposed to hide the evidence of murder. They would not have been tossed into rivers, flushed into sewage (there was no such thing in rural China) or thrown into trash in plastic bags (plastic bags were extremely rare luxury items in rural China at that time).

Fu Ping may have seen some of the remains of forced abortions when hospitals or clinics did not dispose them properly, but not infanticide. If she did, she had an obligation to inform law enforcement for the crimes she witnessed.

John Kennedy: Some Vindication of Ping Fu and the Malicious Chinese Cyber Trolls "Persecuting" her with Facts

The following post was published by John Kennedy on his blog at South China Morning Post, on February 14, 2013, following a report by the Guardian. What is interesting is that Fu Ping herself appears to have commented on this post on questions of her ancestors, although the identity of the comment author can't be totally ascertained.

Last month, China's most feared fraud detector Fang Zhouzi noticed American entrepreneur Ping Fu making improbable claims in interviews as publicity for her book, "Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds" and went to work debunking them in his trademark meticulous style. 

For people familiar with China's horrendous Cultural Revolution and tumultuous early 1980s, Fang's takedown left little doubt of the veracity of Fu's wilder claims to media, some of which she then retracted, suggesting the record would be set straight if people would just read her book. 

Meanwhile, press coverage of Fu and her book was almost exclusively as uncritical as it was patronising, led by The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Forbes as well as others. 

Exhaustive attempts were made in comment sections to explain the issue, but Fu's supporters appeared unwilling to listen. Even senior Reuters editor Harold Evans (and husband of Daily Beast founder Tina Brown) turned out to vouch for Fu, calling online appeals to reason a persecution. 

Of course by this time actual internet trolls, the ones who fabricate China's history in the opposite direction, had joined in, but all of this appeared lost on Fu's unquestioning cheerleaders who, variously, dismissed all the feedback as an attack by Chinese internet vigilantes, a coordinated smear campaign against Fu, now placed high "on the vituperative frontline of cyber hostilities between China and the West". 

Ping Fu, the woman in the picture posing with the other Red Guards, who emerged from the Cultural Revolution politically correct enough to be one of the highly privileged few allowed to study abroad in the early 1980s. 

Eventually some sense came into play via The Guardian's Tania Branigan and Ed Pilkington, who took the time to read the book. 

What did they find?

One of her most striking claims is that Sun Yat-sen, revered as the father of modern China, "raised my grandfather and granduncle as his own sons" – akin to a Briton being reared by Winston Churchill. Prof John Wong of the University of Sydney, an expert on Sun's life, said he had no knowledge of such wards. 

Fu told the Guardian: "That was what I was told by my family before I left China. I believe this is true. My mother says it's in history books." She then added that Sun was attentive towards them, rather than actually adopting them. 

In a chapter of her book titled Factory Worker, Fu describes labouring in factories for a decade until schools reopened in 1976. She describes working six hours a day, six days a week and told an interviewer she never went to school in 10 years. 

Experts on the cultural revolution told the Guardian schools mostly reopened in 1968 or 1969 and that pupils had lessons in factories to learn skills, but were not used as labour.

William Poy Lee: Bent & Twice Broken: Penguin China-bashes to Protect Ping Fu's Flawed "Memoir"

The following post by William Poy Lee was published on the Red Room on February 25, 2013:

On January 20, 2013, Tina Brown's The Daily Beast/Newsweek recommended Ping Fu's new memoir, Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds.   Ms. Brown then double-barreled her recommendation on NPRs Word of Mouth feature, Tina Browns' Must-Reads: Hidden Lives. 

But then, as the Chinese New Year rolled out, a long, hot string of firecrackers exploded in outrage at Ping Fu's apocryphal Cultural Revolution memories.  Not a way to start the Lunar New Year! 

For those of you who may not know about Ping Fu or her memoir, Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, here's what Amazon.com says, in part: 

Book Description
"Ping Fu knows what it's like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student. 

Ping Fu also knows what it's like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year. To be a friend and mentor to some of the best-known names in technology. To build some of the coolest new products in the world. To give speeches that inspire huge crowds. To meet and advise the president of the United States.
It sounds too unbelievable for fiction, but this is the true story of a life in two worlds." 

                      China's Rambunctious Netizens Overwhelm Amazon.com
Then along comes the Facts Calvary - China's ever alert netizens (those outspoken citizens of the internet). Unexpectedly placing Ping Fu's narrative of her wretched childhood as a Red Guard detainee under a microscope...they mostly decide these chapters are, well, “too unbelievable…" 

China's netizens are the same cast of vigilant e-iconoclasts who are a thorn in the side of Chinese officialdom. Mostly young, the netizens with the most followers, often in the millions, are in the mid-40s, 50s, and 60s. They network together to uncover facts and even pioneered a bizarrely named collaborative investigative technique, the “human–flesh search engine,” where unrelated netizens rapidly search for, share and verify information on corrupt officials, hit-and-run drivers, bogus academic credentials, and more benignly, the identity of celebs in random photos.  And then blog, network, tweet and retweet their findings to millions throughout China.  

Three well known investigations include identifying an official who ostentatiously displays expensive wrist watches publicly. Netizens pooled news photos of "Brother Watch" flashing two dozen high end watches, unaffordable at his salary, and he was promptly fired.  Similarly, netizens outed an "Uncle House," who owned over 20 houses on a limited salary.  

Finally, Twenty year old Guo Meimei initially claiming to be the General Business Manager of the Red Cross Society posted photos of her luxury car, expensive stand-alone villa, and trendy clothes. Through the human flesh search engine technique, netizens established links between her and Red Cross upper management and later thwarted her attempt to flee to Australia by bombarding the Australian Embassy to deny her a visa. 

These netizens are same net-savvy Chinese who post on-line one-step ahead of Chinese censors on any number of hot topics and who also contributed to the dissident artist Ai Wei-wei's income tax evasion fine. 

                                       ZhouZi Fang, Lone-Ranger Myth-Buster
In particular, China's most illustrious, incorrigible, myth-busting investigator and the pit-bull scourge of fellow professors and CEOs with specious scientific credentials, the biochemist and science writer, Zhouzi Fang, picked up his own magnifying glass and could not verify Ms. Ping Fu's recounting of the circumstances of her forced exile from China. Fang is the joint winner of the 2012 John Maddox Prize for science, an award jointly sponsored by Nature Magazine and a British foundation, Sense About Science. 

Further, ZhouZi Fang questioned Ping Fu's lurid account of witnessing a female teacher's execution by being drawn-and-quartered by four Red Guards astride four horses. Fang pointed out the 4-horse method was Western, that the ancient Chinese used 5-horse-drawn carriages.  Confronted with Fang’s findings and cultural differentiation, Ping Fu subsequently admitted this dramatic execution never happened, but attributed it to sincerely held "emotional memory." 

                            Lin, Outraged First Position Amazon Blogger
But the Amazon.com netizen who really catalyzed the Chinese blogosphere reaction is a native-born Chinese person named Lin, now resident in the United States. On January 31, 2012, Lin's outraged and yet well-presented point-by-point critique of the book, posted on Amazon.com, raised factual, cultural, and historical issues. She writes in Chinese and English...or I should say in a localized version of English called Chinglish. It's not quite  Elements of Style, but understandable. 

Over the years, I have read English postings by ostensibly paid or blindly patriotic Chinese bloggers.  You can usually sniff them out by their sweeping jingoism. But Lin's bi-lingual critique rang authentic, even if not every point might withstand the exchange that would and did follow, and even as replete with Chinglishy misspellings and grammatical errors. Here's Lin first two paragraphs: 

I don't believe her story
我不相信她的故事 

As a Chinese, I lived through that period of time in China. I have similar family and educational background as hers and suffered during Culture Revolution as a child. I think her experiences in China mostly, if not all, are fabricated, imagined, overly exaggerated or deliberately miss leading.
作为一个中国人，我经历过那个时代。我和她有着类似的家庭，教育背景，我们都在童年经历了文化大革命的磨难。我认为她大多数（如果不是全部的）在中国的经历是伪造的，想象的，过度夸大和故意误导.   

For days, Amazon.com kept Lin's post in first position in the readers' comments section. As the book sank from a high rating of 5 towards the low rating of 1, pressure was placed onAmazon.com to place the newest post first, which would effectively bury Lin’s critique. Amazon's initial position was Lin's comment would sit tight -  it garners the most “helpful” ratings. 

Lin's post should stay in first position - it is thoroughly helpful to understanding and analyzing the furor. However, as of Sunday, February 17th, 2013, Presidents Day weekend, Lin's post has chronologically slid down to Page 5...and counting. You can still read the mesmerizing complete bilingual posting on http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_9450a80f0101gctt.html 

Note that Lin does not seek to bury the brutality of the Cultural Revolution, but insists that any recounting merely be factually accurate. And isn’t this what distinguishes a work of memoir from a work of fiction or partial fiction…the litmus test of James Frey’s discredited  A Million Little Pieces and Greg Mortenson's fabrications inThree Cups of Tea? 

Well, by President’s Day Weekend, the smoke and furor thinned somewhat.  My guess is this is but a lull between rounds of a PR boxing match that will go the full twelve.  But here is what I could make out that Sunday: 

1. Ping Fu, as author, has admitted to a number of critical factual errors unacceptable in a memoir. A key one revolves around the dates of her dramatic departure from China and more dramatic arrival in America. She ascribes them to an unknown editor, that they will be corrected in a second edition. 

2. Ping Fu has admitted to one particularly memoir-sinking fabrication - of being forced to watch four Red Guards on horses drawing and quartering a female teacher on a university field. She now ascribes this false memory to "emotional memory:" 

"To this day, in my mind, I think I saw it. That is my emotional memory of it. After reading's Fang's post, I think in this particular case that his analysis is more rationale and accurate than my memory. Those first weeks after being separated from both my birth parents and my adoptive parents were so traumatic, and I was only eight years old..."   Huffington Post/Books, posted 02/01/2013, 10:36 pm, by Ping Fu. 

The obvious problem is just what other chapters are false emotional memory? And what other childhood stories - even events with verifiable dates, places, and names – may have been emotionally distorted? 

3. The strident Chinese netizens have invaded America's blogosphere. Like the Allies' landing in Normandy on D-Day, they aim to see this through. In doing so, they question the fairness of American institutions such as publishers and media, unexamined biases towards modern China and Chinese, and the penchant of American publishers and the reading public to literally buy the worst unchecked narratives of China, turning them into best sellers. In fact, Bend, Not Break made the NY Times extended best seller list. 

And you know what, Americans can’t stand this invasion into our sacred homeland blogosphere. 

4. Penguin is not recalling the book, admitting at most to minor errors correctable in the second edition.  Following the debacles of A Million Little Pieces and Three Cups of Tea, inspirational "truthiness," even if sincerely held or authentically felt, is no longer a defense. If it is not a memoir, you pull it off the shelves. If you keep it on the shelves, then place a big, fat, red FICTION sticker on it. You can also later republish it as fiction, as unpalatable as that may be. Or republish it as memoir when corrected and re-vetted.

                     New School Penguin: The Best Defense is An Offense
Bend Not Break still is a good read, as I can attest, even as flawed. It will be a better read when subject to the gauntlet of a newly stringent, factual due diligence. (In the spirit of full disclosure, my memoir, The Eighth Promise (2007), Rodale, went through a thorough fact and libel check, checking newspaper archives at UC Berkeley, colleague and family recollections, readers of the Advance Readers Copy, the publisher, and the publisher's legal firm). 

Given the errors, you would think the good old school literary name of Penguin, would owe up, correct the book and reissue it. 

Penguin has done none of the above. Instead, it has doubled down on its investment, deciding that the best defense is offense and in this, the offensive strategy - and offensiveness - of China-bashing. In doing so, the PR strategy conflates all Chinese critics of her book into a modern mob, reminiscent of Ping Fu's childhood Red Guard tormentors, and that China is once again persecuting Ping Fu.  Never mind that China has no official position on her book. Never mind also that quite a few American readers, like me, are critical of Ping Fu’s large and small errors – and the nagging suspicion that this was not a factually well-vetted memoir and possibly even somewhat carelessly written by the co-authors, the second being a Meimei Fox.  Never mind also that in defending Ping Fu’s individual right to express herself, Penguin’s PR offense now dismisses legitimate individual critiques as part of a racial feeding frenzy. 

To Ping Fu's credit, she initially tried to respond to Lin personally, offering to take their discussion off-line. Lin refused, insisting the author post her responses on her Amazon's author section where all could read it. 

Then, Ping Fu  agreed to be re-interviewed by a now more skeptical Forbes Magazine writer, Jenna Goudreau (Forbes.com – January 31, 2013).  Incidentally, Goudreau's initial glowing interview, posted on-line in Forbes China, independently generated its own furor from Chinese netizens. 

As we know, Goudreau's second Forbes interview did not go so well for the book's efficacy. 

On February 2, 2013, Ping Fu came fully on board with the PR line. The basically admirable Ping Fu now denies the investigative merits of ZhangYi Fang and the individuality of the netizen Lin, whose Amazon post kicked off the furor, by relegating all comments as  "…smear campaign…" and elsewhere as a "…smear campaign that reveals the dark side of China..." Sad, But Not Broken, Huffington Post, Posted 02/01/2013 10:41 pm.   

She ends this Huffington Post submission by the oxymoronic defense of her individual right to erroneous self-expression in the factual genre of memoir, so long as the emotional memories are authentically felt, even if false memory. 

"I am human. This is a human story. I have made mistakes in my life, as we all have. That doesn't make the story untrue. This is my life. I carry the scars. This is my story. I tell it, authentically, in the book." 

I would have felt better if Ping Fu had said instead, "I tell it, factually, in my book."   

In my estimation, this posting has the rhetorical slipperiness of PR handlers. At the time, I felt that if left to her devices, Ping Fu would do differently and might do better. 

But then, that same day, Ping Fu tweeted links to two articles, in the first tweet that the Washington Post had been targeted by Chinese hackers and in the second tweet quoting Google's Eric Schmidt opinion that "...China is the world's 'most sophisticated' hacker.'"
Her #tag is @pfgeomagic. There is no explanation of how public-minded Chinese netizens transparent outrage are connected to paid clandestine government hackers. 

Tina Brown's The Daily Beast/Newsweek also doubled down on the side of Bend, Not Break. An article entitled The Persecution of Ping Fu,  by Sir Harold Evans (posted Feb. 11th, 2013 4:45 a.m. EST) simultaneously canonizes Ping Fu and is a hit piece against her Chinese critics: "…a vituperative campaign led against Ping Fu led by an army of Chinese bloggers…”  His prose gets even more purple.  

Interestingly, Sir Evans makes no mention of Zhangzi Fang, co-winner of the 2012 John Maddox Prize and investigative debunker, his researched findings, or of Ping Fu's admission that the execution by drawing and quartering never happened. 

As for Lin, the former No. 1 position Amazon.com poster, Sir Evans’ sole concern seems to be how to check off her gender box - "Male, female or hermaphrodite..." He never addresses any of Lin's critiques or Ping Fu's subsequent admissions of error. As an aside, Lin is a mother of two who lives in the US. 

Sir Evans then misrepresents the role of the so-called human-flesh search engine as a Chinese method of subjecting people to “…lacerating personal attacks…"  Unfortunately it does sound like an app made for zombies, and Sir Evans, a skilled rhetorician who should know better (he is an editor-at-large for Reuters and author of The American Century), plays off this and never mentions its more usual collaborative use against corruption. 

Sir Evans also seems to confuse all Chinese Americans as those who have recently immigrated from the People’s Republic of China, i.e., first generation and ostensibly feeling quite a bit of loyalty to the Good Old Motherland.  He may be surprised to know that millions of Americans of Chinese heritage are as far along as third, fourth, and even fifth generation – like me. 

The Guardian Weighs In 

Then on February 13, 2013,  The Guardian, an English newspaper, sensibly did what The Daily Beast/Newsweek could just have easily done - they interviewed academic experts in Sydney, London, California, and Beijing, on the cultural, historical, and factual controversies raised by Lin and echoed by fellow Chinese netizens. The Guardian article casts doubt on several new assertions: 

1. Sun Yat-sen, the George Washington of China, "...raised my grandfather and grand uncle as his own sons."; 

2. Children like her were forced to work 6 hours a day, 6 days a week in a factory;  

3. Deng Xiaoping sat down with leaders of student publications including her magazine, Red Maple; and 

4. Infanticide occurred on the large scale alleged by Ping Fu. 

                                                               Is the Jig Up?
I had emailed The Daily Beast's rave review onto a young Chinese woman friend currently spending a year at Columbia University researching American media and auditing related classes.  She majors in Economics and American Studies. After gobbling up the book, this lecturer at the prestigious Beijing Foreign Studies University enthusiastically ordered three copies to gift to friends in China. She then happily weibo'ed  her 2-thumbs-up to her following in China. Weibo is of course the equivalent of Twitter in China. Later, she even defended her belief in Ping Fu over the Chinese blogosphere. 

And how did my young Chinese Professorial friend take the continuing denouement? 

I truly thought that this book is a great inspiration and consolation for those who struggle in their life. Yet, without authenticity, this won't work. Why doesn't Ping respond to those questions one by one, with facts and evidence, or at least for those unprovable, a reasonable explanation?” 

                                           Those Invading Chinese Netizens
Welcome to the globalization of the blogosphere.  It may surprise Americans that Chinese actually care about how Americans view China or that Chinese are endlessly fascinated by American culture and society, that they watch complete seasons of American TV series (Sex and the City, Friend, Prison Break, and Desperate Housewives) and the latest  movies. Because of mandatory English as a second language, many of the younger generation read, write and speak English (although generally in a Chinglishy grammatical style as I can attest from four years of teaching.)   No wonder that Chinese netizens can so freely flow over into our blogosphere.  And when Americans equally make it a point to learn Chinese, we’re return the favor. 

But for now, my fellow Americans, read the comments on both Amazon.com and B&N.com. Yes, there is now angry, lynch-mob ire - which Penguin's defenders focus exclusively on. But there is also many good faith, meritorious postings, which Penguin now seeks to discredit through China-bashing.  In actuality, quite a few questioning posts are by fellow Americans, like me. I early on rated the book a "3" due to concerns of accuracy. 

Most recently, there is a counter-campaign by posters of top 5 ratings on Amazon.com. So,  the blogosphere had momentarily boiled down to an East-West divide, pithily captured in this Amazon.com posting: 

            1.0 out of 5 stars A Memoir Dividing Two Worlds, February 16, 2013
                                    By Lenny - See all my reviews
1-star: Some of Ping Fu's stories told in her book don't seem to be true.
5-star: It is a very inspiring book! 

1-star: Some of Ping Fu's stories are not true and my doubts are supported by the evidence provided by many reviewers.
5-star: She is a courageous woman! 

1-star: There are discrepancies between the book and her interviews with different media outlets.
5-star: Ping Fu's book is honest and fascinating. 

1-star: Ping Fu claims that she became a factory worker in China when she was 10 years old, but recently she made contradictory statement by saying "I also did not say I was a factory worker."
5-star: You are jealous of her success and fame. 

1-star: Ping Fu has admitted that the description of Red Guards killing a teacher by tying the victim to four horses for dismembering during the Cultural Revolution was an "emotional memory" and probably wrong.
5-star: I truly enjoyed reading her book and will give it to my children to read. 

1-star: Many reviewers had a similar life experience to that of Ping Fu's in China but they do not believe many of her claims.
5-star: An excellent book! 

1-star: You need to come up with solid evidence to prove those doubts on Ping Fu are groundless and wrong. You are not doing a very good job in defending her.
5-star: You must have been hired by the Chinese government to carry out this smear campaign against her. 

1-star: As a friend of Ping Fu's, is it possible that you might have a bias?
5-star: "Haven't you got an iPad to make or something?" "I will leave you all bending and not breaking the english language." 

1-star: Many reviewers think Ping Fu has knowingly made up sensational stories for her personal gain, and they think she is a liar.
5-star: Free speech must triumph! 

                                                             Conclusion
The controversy over Ping Fu's memoir is a big story. But the much bigger and more troubling story is how the Penguin Group refuses to conduct a fresh, independent factual due diligence, and then, as it now seems inevitable, to do the right thing – recall, correct, and reissue. 

It may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, for a book recall of this size.  Consumers may even file class action suits for refunds, as some did against “A Million Little Pieces.”  But it's the ethical step. 

But despite The Guardian revelations, both Ping Fu and Penguin are still spinning. Ping Fu's new take is she now realizes her Chinese critics were not smearing her, but were merely reciting their own Cultural Revolution stories, not questioning hers. She actually hopes "...we can heal together." 

As of today, February 25, 2013, it turns out Ping Fu had a first American husband she never mentioned.  Also, her memoir describes a dramatic 3-day kidnapping on her first day in America. Later freed by Albuquerque, New Mexico police, she reported her ordeal through a translator. Local police have not been able to find a confirming incident report to date. 

Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Penguin's business imprint, Portfolio, opines that there are only "...minor mistakes..." that will be corrected in the second edition. 

And you know what, it looks like Penguin is getting away with it. 

I look forward to Ping Fu’s next book: “Conscience: Leased-Out But Not Sold.” 

                                                              - The End -
William Poy Lee is the author of a memoir, The Eighth Promise, an independent writer, and member of the California bar. He has resided in Beijing for over 3-1/2 years where he teaches English, tries to understand Modern China on its terms while measuring it against his Western values and sensibilities, and has fun. He taught English to university level Tibetans in Lhasa during the summer of 2010. 

Special Thanks to Xiu Chen for her spot-research and knowledge of modern China, especially of the lively Chinese blogosphere.

Fang Zhouzi: The Depravation of Sir Harold Evans

The following post was published by Fang Zhouzi on his blog on February 21, 2013 and was immediately translated into English by xgz. This post is a direct response to Sir Harold Evans' article on The Daily Beast.

Harold Evans is a famous British journalist. How famous is he? In 2000, he was named one of International Press Institute's 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past fifty years. In 2004, he was knighted by the Queen for services to journalism. When he was a young man, he was a well-known British investigative reporter. He was the first to report many of the headline events of the day, and earned his reputation for his sense of justice and his daring reporting. Later he emigrated to the United States, served as editor-in-chief for the Atlantic Monthly, and then for U.S. News and World Report. Currently he is editor-at-large for Reuters. His wife Tina Brown is also a heavyweight of the U.S. press, an editor for both Newsweek and the Daily Beast. 

This greatly respected sage of the Western press, recently wrote a commentary on the Daily Beast titled "the persecution of Ping Fu." In this commentary he denounced the criticism of Ping Fu's memoir by world-wide Chinese community as a persecution of her. Evans' wife Tina Brown has been an important supporter of Ping Fu. She had promoted Ping Fu's memoir on the National Public Radio in the United States. Her newspaper, the Daily Beast, has also been heavily promoting the book. This newspaper was among the first to publish a report of the criticism of Ping Fu, but it quoted the criticism out of context in an attempt to label the criticism as an organized smear campaign, in clear violation of journalistic ethics. Evans had himself conducted an interview of Ping Fu on behalf of Reuters, but never questioned the legend-like stories told by Ping Fu. So it is no surprise that he would come out again and continue to speak on behalf of Ping Fu. What is surprising, however, is the horrific writing style and journalistic incompetency displayed by him that is completely at odds with his sagely image in the field of journalism. 

Evans focused on the large number of one-star reviews on the Amazon website of Ping Fu's memoir Bend, not Break. Initially, Ping Fu's memoir received mostly five-star (highest) reviews, written by Americans. At the end of last month, hundreds of negative reviews, most apparently written by Chinese Americans, began to appear and pulled the average rating to less than 2 stars. This seemingly unusual phenomenon actually has a very simple explanation: at the end of last month, I began to criticize Ping Fu's memoir (Note by translator: on microblog, a Chinese version of twitter), which attracted attention to this book. Because I have a lot of followers on microblog (Note by translator: Fang Zhouzi has a few million followers on microblog), it is not surprising that a few hundred of them who are also Amazon users would go there and write negative book reviews. But this was not how Evans thought. He intentionally made no mention of my name in the article (Why is it intentionally? Because previous reports about the incident, including the The Daily Beast reports and Ping Fu's response either named me explicitly, or referred to my article implicitly, so it is impossible for Evans to not know), but attributed the emergence of a large number of negative book reviews to two possible reasons: 

1. Sockpuppets. Evans claimed that, one only needs an e-mail account to post a book review on the Amazon website. Thus, a person can use multiple mailboxes to register more than one account, posing as two people, 20 people, or even 100 people writing different book reviews. He complained bitterly about Amazon's "openness" and its ineffective handling of complaints. As a former investigative reporter, Evans did not even bother to check the basic requirements set up by Amazon to post book reviews there. It takes more than an email address to post book reviews on Amazon. One must also have purchased something through the Amazon website (not necessarily the book being reviewed). Through the purchase, the user will have already left a real name and address with Amazon. Although book reviews can be posted with a pseudonym, but the identity of the reviewer is real. It is very hard for a user who post comments on Amazon to have two accounts, let alone one hundred accounts. 

Lin was the first negative reviewer of Ping Fu's memoir on Amazon, and continued to add the most detailed discussion to her review. Her review had the most comments and was rated most useful by readers, thus was automatically placed at the top of the web page. This brought special attention from Evans, who attacked Lin with the horrible line "Male, female, or hermaphrodite." Lin herself said in her book review that she is a woman, and this can be easily verified by Amazon. Evans also claimed that although the book review written by Lin was negative, she gave a fake five star. There had been some negative reviews that gave five stars for irony, but Lin's review had always been one-star. It is clear that Evans did a very sloppy journalistic work. After repeated complaints from Ping Fu's PR team, Amazon deleted Lin's review on grounds of being "visually disruptive." Lin later posted a new review with an ironic five-star, but this was well after Evans published his article. 

2. A "hate campaign" by Chinese nationalists in the United States or organized by the Chinese government. Evans cited a large body of data to prove that there are people who are hired to post on internet forums, the so-called wumao (Note by translator: these are the people who are hired by the Chinese government to post comments in support of the government. For each post they receive a payment of 0.5 yuan renminbi. This amount is pronounced wumao in Chinese. Thus these people are called wumao). The existence of wumao is not a secret. But one cannot be like celebrities on Chinese microblogs who accuse anyone disagreeing with them of being wumao. If one is to prove that critics of Ping Fu are all wumao, then at least a few questions need to be answered: Why would the Chinese government go through the trouble of organizing such a multinational campaign? Ping Fu is not the enemy of the Chinese government. Quite the contrary, she frequently visited China in recent years to give speeches (for example, she gave a speech at Nanjing University on July 10, 2009). The company she founded, Geomagic software, has a branch in Shanghai. Chinese media had previously published multiple reports touting her (for example: "MoCho · Wisdom Woman" 2009 10 "U.S. Nouveau Riche Fu Ping: My Success Relied on Chinese Wisdom", "Shenzhen Special Zone Daily" 2012 February 24, "Chinese American Woman Entrepreneur Ping Fu Receives the Title of "Distinguished American", "China Business News" March 14, 2012 "Ping Fu, Chinese Woman Entrepreneur's Wonderful Life"). Ping Fu's memoir wrote about her miseries while in China, but that is not a sensitive topic. There are better known books on Amazon that present much darker descriptions of China. Why did none of those books receive such a treatment? There is simply no motivation for the Chinese government to take any action against Ping Fu or her memoir. 

Even if the Chinese government for some strange reason wants to discredit Ping Fu, how can it organize such a thing? Those who wrote negative book reviews on Amazon website were mostly overseas Chinese, in particular Chinese Americans. The website where people can post book reviews is in the United States; reviewers must have bought something from Amazon, and the review must be written in English. Spot checking a few negative book reviews, one can easily see that most of the reviews were written by Chinese Americans who had lived in the United States for many years. The level of English writing in these reviews cannot be reached by someone who have not lived in the United States. How could the Chinese government command so many overseas Chinese, many of whom are already U. S. citizens? These Chinese Americans, regardless of their political ideologies, gave overwhelmingly negative reviews to Ping Fu's memoir, and rebuked her lying. Almost no Chinese Americans supported Ping Fu (not counting one or two "whatever Fang opposes, I support" type of Fang detractors). Since when did the Chinese government have such a strong appeal? In addition, there are also non-Chinese scholars who questioned the truthfulness of Ping Fu's memoir (see the Guardian report). Can the Chinese government command these scholars too? I have not seen any influential person or website to call upon people to post negative reviews. On the other hand, Ping Fu and her team had repeatedly called on supporters to post positive reviews and send complaints to Amazon. 

Evans complained that after Penn State professor of Asian history, Erica Brindley, posted a comment in support of Ping Fu on the Amazon website, she was subject to a "human flesh search" (Note by translator: searching for real identity through google). Evans did not tell the reader the result of the "human flesh search": Erica Brindley is the sister-in-law of Ping Fu memoir's co-author MeiMei Fox. Dr. Erica Brindley spoke as a "PhD from Princeton University", and a sinologist. But what she said did not jibe with her position. This inconsistency prompted the suspicion of a conflict of interest. The "human flesh search" proved such a conflict. In this case, "human flesh search" is entirely justified. This would be similar to when Harold Evans was speaking on behalf of thalidomide victims, if someone spoke in support of thalidomide manufacturers, he would have investigated whether these people had conflict of interest. Evans also complained that when someone by the id of Van Harris spoke in support of Ping Fu, he was subject to personal attacks. First of all, it was Van Harris himself who carried out personal attacks against critics of Ping Fu (I have also been personally attacked by him, although I did not even have any exchange with him), and he also threatened critics. This person is a freelance graphic designer in North Carolina, and is possibly connected to Ping Fu's company which is also located in the same state. 

Evans said that any memoir would inevitably contain errors, and welcomed people to point out those errors. He said that he could not tolerate critics who were trying to destroy Ping Fu's credibility, and even her life. The problem is, we do not believe that the large number of critical errors in Ping Fu's memoir are just lapses in memory. They are intentional lies. If someone builds her reputation and fortune through lies, shouldn't the justice be to remove her credibility and such life? 

By speaking for a liar and abandoning journalistic professionalism, Evans behaved not as a competent journalist, and miles away from the hero of journalism. Such an unusual performance from him, is only possible because of his ignorance of China, his arrogance and prejudice against criticism - prejudice against Chinese in particular. Imagine if another ethnic group, say if Jews exposed those who fabricated their own tragic stories during the Holocaust (such fabrications have happened before), would Evans dare to accuse without basis those critics to have taken payments to engage in a smear campaign? Obviously not. Why did he do this to Chinese? It is racist prejudice at play. To him, Chinese are born without any sense of justice, without independent thinking. They only take orders from the government, and only do things when paid. Even if you have lived in the United States for many years, even if you are already an U.S. citizen, in Evans' eyes, you are still a Chinese nationalist ready to pledge allegiance to the Chinese government - such an accusation by Evans et al., is the real smear campaign in this whole affair.

　　哈洛尔德·伊万斯（Harold Evans）是英国著名的新闻人，著名到什么程度呢？2000年他被国际新闻协会评为50年来50名世界新闻自由英雄之一。2004年他因为在新闻领域的贡献而被英国女王封为爵士。在他年轻的时候，他是英国著名的调查记者，首先报道过多起著名事件，因为正义敢言而名噪一时。后来移居美国，担任过《大西洋月刊》《美国新闻与世界报道》等杂志的主编，目前为路透社的非在编编辑（editor-at-large）。其妻子是美国新闻界的重量级人物，《新闻周刊》和《野兽日报》的主编蒂娜·布朗（Tina Brown）。 

　　就是这么一位西方新闻界大佬，最近在《野兽日报》发表了一篇评论《傅苹的迫害》（http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/11/the-persecution-of-ping-fu.html ），把世界华人对傅苹回忆录的批评称为是对傅苹的迫害。伊万斯的妻子布朗是傅苹的重要支持者，曾在美国公共电台推荐傅苹回忆录，其主办的《野兽日报》也力推过傅苹回忆录，并在傅苹受到批评时最先发表报道，违反新闻道德，用断章取义的手法把对傅苹的批评称为有组织的抹黑行动。伊万斯本人曾代表路透社采访过傅苹，对傅苹的“传奇故事”毫不怀疑。因此他在这个时候出来继续为傅苹站台，并不意外。意外的是他在其站台文章中体现出来的拙劣的文风和低下的新闻素养，与其新闻界大佬的形象完全不符。 

　　伊万斯主要针对的是亚马逊网站上傅苹回忆录《弯而不折》（Bend, not Break）后面的大量的1星（最低）书评。傅苹回忆录原先在那里基本上都是美国人撰写的5星（最高）书评，在上个月月底开始出现了几百条由华人撰写的负面书评，把它的平均分拉到了不到2星。这个看上去不寻常的现象本来有一个很寻常的解释：因为我在上个月月底开始批评傅苹回忆录，引起了我的广大读者对这本书的注意。我的读者群这么大，有几百个亚马逊用户因此去发表负面书评，根本就不足为奇。但是伊万斯不这么认为。他在文章中故意对我只字不提（为什么说是故意呢？因为此前有关这个事件的报道包括《野兽日报》自己的报道以及傅苹的回应全都点名或不点名地提到我的作用，他不可能不知道），把大量负面书评的出现归为两个可能的原因： 

　　一、水军发的。伊万斯声称，在亚马逊发书评只要有一个电子信箱即可，一个人可以用多个信箱注册多个帐号，冒充两个人、20个人、100个人发书评。他对亚马逊的这种“公开性”很不满，而且抱怨亚马逊处理投诉不力。作为曾经的调查记者，伊万斯甚至懒得去查一下在亚马逊发书评的基本要求。要在亚马逊发书评，并非只要有电子信箱即可，还必须曾经在亚马逊购买过东西（不一定是购买要评论的书），必然在亚马逊留有真实姓名和地址。虽然在亚马逊可以用化名发书评，但是评论者的身份都是真实的，一个用户很难同时在亚马逊上有两个帐号发评论，更不要说一百个帐号。 

　　lin是最早在亚马逊对傅苹回忆录发表负面书评的，并不断补充，成为最为详尽的、讨论最多、也最受好评的书评，一直被自动置顶，也就遭到伊万斯特别关照，攻击说这个lin不知道是“男人、女人还是两性人”，虽然lin自己在书评里说了是女人，并可由亚马逊作证。伊万斯还说lin的书评虽然是负面的，却冒充5星书评。虽然有的负面书评故意打5星进行讽刺，但lin的书评在被删除前一直就是打的1星，可见伊万斯调查工作之马虎。在傅苹团队的不断投诉下，lin的书评被亚马逊以“扰乱视觉”为由删除。lin新发的书评才改给了讽刺性的5星，但那是伊万斯文章发表之后的事了。 

　　二、在美国的中国民族主义者或中国政府组织的“憎恨运动”。伊万斯并引用了一大段资料来证明中国存在拿钱发贴的五毛。网上当然有五毛，这并非秘密。但是你不能像国内微博上的“公知”那样把批评者一概当成五毛。想要证明傅苹的批评者是五毛，至少要能够回答这么几个问题：为什么中国政府要费心费力组织这么场跨国运动？傅苹并非中国政府的敌人，恰恰相反，近年来她频繁到中国访问、做报告（例如2009年7月10号在南京大学做报告），其创办的杰魔软件公司在上海有分公司，中国媒体此前多次发表过吹捧她的报道（例如：《莫愁·智慧女性》2009年10期《美国新富傅苹：我靠中国智慧成功》，《深圳特区报》2012年2月24日《美籍华人女企业家傅苹获“杰出美国人”称号》，《中国新闻报》2012年3月14日《华裔女企业家傅苹演绎精彩人生》）。傅苹回忆录虽然讲了自己在国内时的悲惨遭遇，但是那也不是什么敏感的话题，亚马逊上描写中国黑暗面的书籍比它更出名的、更悲惨的还有的是，为什么就没有哪一本享受了这样的待遇？所以中国政府根本就没有任何动机要对傅苹或对她的回忆录采取什么行动。 

　　即使中国政府莫名其妙地要抹黑傅苹，它又如何组织得起来？在亚马逊网站上写负面书评的基本上都是海外华人，特别是在美国的华人，因为那是在美国的网站，必须买过东西才能写书评，而且必须用英文写。只要抽查几篇负面书评看一下，就可以知道大多数是由在美国生活多年的华人写的，才有那样的英文写作水平。中国政府怎么指挥得动这么多的海外华人，其中很多已加入美国国籍？而且华人不分政治派别一面倒地给予傅苹回忆录负面评价，斥责傅苹说谎，几乎找不到有华人支持傅苹的（一两个“方舟子反对的我就支持”、借此攻击我的方黑忽略不计），中国政府何时有了如此强大的号召力？何况质疑傅苹回忆录真实性的还有非华人学者（见《卫报》的报道），难道中国政府连他们都指挥得动？也从来没有见过有哪个有影响力的人物或网站号召大家去写负面书评。相反地，倒是见到傅苹及其团队的人在号召支持者去写正面书评和向亚马逊投诉。 

　　伊万斯控诉说，宾州（州立）大学亚洲历史学家Erica Brindley因为在亚马逊支持傅苹，就遭到了“人肉搜索”。伊万斯没有告诉读者的是“人肉搜索”的结果：Erica Brindley是傅苹回忆录代笔者MeiMei Fox的嫂子。Erica Brindley是以“普林斯顿大学博士”、“汉学专家”的身份站出来力挺傅苹的，因为她的发言内容与她的身份不符，人们才怀疑她是否与书的作者存在利益关系，搜索的结果证明了这一点。这种“人肉搜索”完全是正当的，这就好比伊万斯当年为反应停的受害者维权时，如果有人跳出来剧烈地为反应停厂家辩护，他肯定也会想到要去查查此人是否与厂家有着利益关系。伊万斯还控诉说，有一个叫Van Harris的人因为替傅苹说话，就遭到了人身攻击。首先对傅苹批评者进行人身攻击的恰恰是Van Harris自己（我也受到其人身攻击，虽然我并没有和他争论），而且他还威胁傅苹的批评者。此人是北卡罗莱纳州的一个自由图像设计师，有可能与位于该州的傅苹的公司有合作关系。 

　　伊万斯说，回忆录难免有错误，指出记忆错误应该受欢迎。他难以忍受的是批评者试图让傅苹丧失信用，乃至破坏她的生活。问题是，我们并不认为傅苹回忆录中大量的关键性错误是回忆错误，而是有意说谎。那么，对于一个靠撒谎来获得名声和利益的人，难道不该让她丧失信用，破坏她的生活吗？ 

　　伊万斯如此没有专业精神地力挺一个撒谎者，不像一个合格的新闻人，更不要说是一个新闻界的英雄。如此大失水准，是因为对中国的无知、对批评的傲慢与偏见——对华人的偏见。试想，如果换另一个族群，例如犹太人揭露那些捏造自己在大屠杀中的悲惨故事的人（这种事曾发生过），伊万斯敢毫无根据地说这些批评者是在拿钱搞抹黑行动吗？显然不敢。为什么对华人就敢？还不是种族主义偏见在作怪，似乎华人天生就没有正义感，没有独立性，只会听从政府指挥，拿钱替人办事。不管你在美国生活了多少年，不管你是否已加入了美国国籍成为美国公民，在伊万斯这些人看来，你仍然是个中国民族主义者，随时准备效忠中国政府——伊万斯等人这么做，才是抹黑行动。

The Daily Beast: The Persecution of Ping Fu

On February 11, 2013, The Daily Beast published the following report authored by Sir Harold Evans, who had previously interviewed Fu Ping on behalf of the Reuters.

Although the article was published under "World News," it reads more like an opinion piece than objective reporting. Indeed, it is as strongly opinionated as it is biased. Evans attacked Fu Ping's critics with outlandish name-callings and even singled out the "lin" at Amazon and attacked her personally.

She was one among the millions of victims of Red Guard cruelty in Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She came to America as a penniless exile—and dared to succeed. Now, for telling her story, writes Harold Evans, she's once more the target of a mob. 

“Do not read this book if you reject kindness, humility, and ingenuity.” So wrote Sally Rosenthal, the television producer, in her early appraisal of Bend, Not Break by Ping Fu, a memoir of 50 years of her life in two worlds, China and America. 

Serious reviewers have acclaimed the book ("she tells her story with intelligence, verve and a candor that is often heart-rending," wrote Melanie Kirkpatrick in the Wall Street Journal). Yet rejection of the values Rosenthal identified in the book is the central feature of a vituperative campaign against Ping Fu led by an army of Chinese bloggers.

Now 54, Ping Fu came to America, alone and unwillingly, when she was 25, having upset the Chinese government by describing what she’d seen in the countryside, the murder of female babies at birth in pursuit of the one-child policy. She was penniless, with only a few words of English, and haunted by memories of a brutal separation from her adoptive family. She cleaned houses, waited on tables, learned English, fell in love with computers (and a computational scientist she married), discovered an aptitude for programming. In 1997 she cofounded Geomagic, a software imaging company whose modeling systems afford precise replication of complex shapes—the custom cranial plate for the skull of ABC’s Bob Woodruff, blown up in Iraq; heat tiles for the shuttle; prosthetic limbs of hitherto unimaginable precision. In 2010 she was appointed to President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 

The cyberwarriors attacking her are not interested in any of that. They are consumed by bitter resentment of her portrayal of China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She lied, they assert, about being gang-raped at 10: “the Red Guard were ‘revolutionists, not street thugs or rapists.’” The countryside infanticide due to the one-child policy she wrote about in an essay, which led to her arrest and solitary confinement, couldn’t have happened when she said it did if at all, they assert; nor was her subsequent departure due to an order for deportation. 

I say “army” of assailants, but how many there are and where they are is one of the tantalizing unknowns in Internet warfare conducted anonymously. Two user names—20, a hundred—may conceal a single identity. The Wizard of Oz syndrome has been powerfully amplified, in this case, by the openness, some would say naiveté, of Amazon. It’s a brilliant company, but its book review site is not designed to repel boarders. Anyone with multiple email addresses and user names can click that many times on the invitations to write a customer review or say which other reviews they found helpful. Some 500 have clicked on the low one-star rating for Bend, Not Break, and 100 on the five-star—but this, too, is deceptive, since some five-star reviews are bogus, infiltrating more poison than praise. Second, the hostile ratings can be boosted by a tongue-in-cheek click: “I found this [nasty] review helpful.” 

Take the industrious "Lin." Male, female, or hermaphrodite. Lin has led the customer review section with a five-star but hostile review of January 22 that was pages long. Amazon justified this, it seems, by the statement that “1,301 of 1,379 found the following review helpful.” Lin was still leading the reviews on February 9. How was this achieved when other genuine reviews of merit had appeared and the legend was unchanged that 1,301 of 1,379 “found the following review helpful?” Amazon has a button to enable readers to alert the site to abuse. It doesn’t seem to have much effect. 

We don’t know how much of the hate campaign is organized by Chinese-Americans, proud of their country of origin, or by bloggers in China, acting on their own or encouraged by party and government. It is perhaps worth noting that putting the name Fu first is the Chinese way of ordering her name. 

The dissident artist Ai Weiwei (New Statesman, October 17, 2012) has exposed the systematic way these things are organized in China by relating the confessions of one of the commentators hired by the Chinese government or Communist Party to steer a discussion away from anti-party content. They’re said to be paid 50 cents for every post on an Internet message board. 

“I cannot make my name public. I’m 26. I have too many user names. If I want to use one, I just register it ... Almost every morning at 9 a.m. I receive an email from my superiors, on which directions to guide netizens’ thoughts, to blur their focus. This requires a lot of skill. You can’t write in a very official manner, you must conceal your identity ... You want to create illusions to attract the attention and comments of netizens ... The tone of speech, identity and stance of speech must look as if it is an unsuspecting member of public, only then can it resonate with netizens.” 

The anti-Ping bloggers on Amazon are not just a random assortment of individuals who seek to correct lapses of memory. That is fair enough, indeed desirable; it would be surprising if there were not errors in remembrance. It’s the substance of the reviews that matter and the intent of the critic, and here the intent is less literary than political. The purpose seems to be to undermine the author’s credibility about her privations at the hands of the Red Guards when she was torn from her home at age 8 with The Little Red Book for her education. 

But not just that. The campaign has morphed into a vindictive effort to destroy her life, to have her honors and awards withdrawn, the pending sale of Geomagic disrupted. Ping Fu groups have been formed, character assassination tasks assigned, and Amazon reviewers created a Google group to take their conversation offline. Here’s an entry from one of them under the rubric “Do not like liers [sic].” 

“I am thinking about launching a petition on the White House website demanding the government to look into FU’s green card application case for possible lying under oath (it only takes 150 signatures for the petition to be displayed on the website.” 

To which Lanlan Wang responds, “good idea, can someone provide a link.” 

The apparent leader of the Google group writes: “Collect Ping’s book (it hurts to say this but yeah we need facts).” 

“Draft an open letter to Chinese living in North America, call for action” 

Here’s a contributor to the Facebook group: “Please join this group, It is time to stay together and give this blatant fraud a final strike. We will discuss this, dig out more lies. Write a petition to UCIS NBC, PBS, to expose her lies.” 

Prof. Erica Brindley, a historian of Asia at Penn, ventured into the forum to say that Ping’s account of the Cultural Revolution was sound. At once she was subjected to lacerating personal attacks, known in China as “the human-flesh search.” So, too, Van Harris in the Google group, who protested the tactics of harassment and personal abuse. “H Chen” told him he must be a paid troll for Ping, a stupid American, a very, very lousy lawyer who should see a psychiatrist. 

And Ping Fu? No doubt she is remembering the counsel of her Shanghai Papa that has fortified her all her life. “Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance ... Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. Take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly.”

Fu Ping's Reuter Interview with Sir Harold Evans

On January 15, 2013, Fu Ping had an interview with Reuters Editor-at-Large Sir Harold Evans, titled as "Ping Fu's Dramatic Journey from Capativity to Computer Entrepreneur". In this interview, Fu Ping stated,

1. She was working in factories as a child, building radios and speedometers.
2. She saw baby girls being killed "with my bare eyes". In the video, there is a priceless shot of Evans' shocked and disbelieving face.
3. She did not even know her thesis was picked up and put in the newspaper
4. [She] looked to different countries for a place to study
5. The famous three English words are "hello", "thank you", and "help"

The interview, which appears to have been edited, can be viewed here. Below is a partial transcript:

Evans: Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a little girl in a beautiful house with a cortyard and a garden where she chased dragonflies around. It's a lovely family and she was very, very happy. On her eighth birthday, a beautiful birthday cake was given with a picture of a garden on it. She blew up the candles and made a wish. The wish was she could fly like the dragonflies in the garden. But she didn't blow up all the candles. Great darkness descended on the land. Cruel people took her away and kept her in captivity  Then, she escaped. This is the story of Ping Fu, who is now here with us in the Reuters studio in New York. Congratulations on this book. The title is Bend, not Break, a Life in Two Worlds. Two worlds are of course China and the United States. Take us back to the beginning of the fairy story and bring us into the real life. It was 1966 and you are... 

Fu: I was in Shanghai at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution. 

Evans: What's the first thing you know about this cataclysmic change which is coming to China? 

Fu: First I noticed things going strange because there are a lot of liters in our land and my German neighbor disappeared  One day, I heard this loud sound with boots marching into my house and I thought somebody is going to come into my house to make trouble. I knew there was chaos around the neighborhood. Little did I know that they were coming for me. 

Evans: They were looking for you? But you were only 8 years of age? 

Fu: I was only 8 years. I was in my grandfather, father's library. Then I heard my Shanghai Mom said, "She is so little." I stick my head out. I heard they are coming as Red Guards. They are teenagers, with Mao's green uniform with a little red star on their hat. They say, "She is there." I ran back to the library but it only took seconds for them to come up to the library. 

Title Display: Ping Fu's parents had sent her to live with relatives in Shanghai. During the cultural Revolution, moving around the country became illegal. Ping was taken away.

Fu: They took me away from the only home I knew. In a single day I lost both set of parents and I became a surrogate mother to my sister. 

Evans: How old was your sister, you say? She was 4 and you were 8? 

Fu: Yes. 

Evans: What were you doing everyday?  

Fu: First I went to the factory to peel off plastic parts -- I don't know what they are. Then I got older, I built radios, speedometers. 

Evans: You built radios in a factory? 

Title Display: Ping Fu and her sister spent the next decade in a re-education camp. They were starved and regularly beaten. 

Evans: Fast forward as you were. Deng Xiaoping comes in, the Cultural Revolution is finished. What happens then, in terms of getting on with life? You are now 18, I think, when the Cultural Revolution ends. What happened? 

Fu: I studied for a whole year. I heard the rumors of universities are gong to open again. I was known as the girl whose lights never turned off. I passed the national exam and I got in. 

Evans: So now you are studying Chinese literature and you enjoyed it. And that takes you to the countryside for some reason. You are writing a thesis. What happened? What did you see in the countryside? 

Fu: It was at the peak of China's one-child policy. Every couple can only have one child. At that time, China was still 90% agriculture. The farmers want sons. So I heard there was wide-spread killing of baby girls.  

Evans: You saw babies are being killed? 

Fu: I saw it with my bare eyes. I saw babies are being tossed into river with their embryonic cords still fresh. I saw babies being put in the plastic bags and tossed into garbage. 

Evans: By the parents? 

Fu: By the parents or by the neighborhood leaders. 

Evans: That is an unspeakable cruelty. 

Fu: Unimaginable. 

Title Display: Ping Fu wrote her thesis about the atrocities, attracting global media attention. 

Evans: So the international media were told about the fact that babies are being killed. What was that you are first aware of the fact that you, about 20 or 21 years old, had created an international firestorm? 

Fu: I did not know that, 'cause we didn't have access to international newspaper. I did not even know my thesis was picked up and put in newspaper. I don't read newspaper every day. I was just walking in the college to go to a class and somebody come behind my back and put a sack over me and said, "Don't scream", and took me away from the campus. 

Evans: Where were you taken to? 

Fu: I was taken to this Jeep or car. I think it's a Jeep because I can feel the wind. We drove hours. I was taken to this prison outside of Nanjing and put into this windowless room. No lights, no window, no bed and smells like ammonia. 

Title Display: After three days in captivity, Ping Fu was released but told she must leave China and never return. 

Fu: And so we looked to different countries for a place I can study and US just happened to be the first one giving me a visa. 

Evans: Did you need a visa to get into US? 

Fu: I need a visa. Back then in 84 it was very easy. We applied in 83, it was very easy. 

Evans: So how could you afford to come to the United States? 

Fu: My mother used up all her savings to buy me a ticket. 

Title Display: Ping Fu arrived in teh U.S. with just $80 to her name. 

Evans: How much English did you speak? 

Fu: I spoke only three words. I tried to learn more but by the time I arrived I only remember three words. 

Evans: What was ... 

Fu: Hello, thank you, and help.

[More conversations on Geomagic...]