Bend Fact: Fu Ping's Deportation

The Original Story:
The very first sentence of Bend, Not Break, on Page 1, declared,

When I was twenty-five years old, the Chinese government quietly deported me.

She elaborated a little more on Page 258:

A few weeks after the house arrest began, I was called to the local police station and given my government orders. "You must leave China at once. You are not welcome back," a stiff-lipped officer told me. He instructed me never to talk about my arrest or my thesis research. "Don't embarrass your country again." After a short silence, he then added, "We know where your family lives."

In several of her media interviews in 2013, Fu Ping and/or her hosts variously used the phrases "deported", "exile", or "kicked out" to describe her departure from China in 1984.

The Changing Story:
Facing wide-spread questioning, Fu Ping explained to Jenna Goudreau of Forbes, as the latter reported on January 31, 2013:

It also raised eyebrows that she said she had been exiled or deported from China, when there is no official record of it. When I asked her to address it, Fu says “exile” is not the correct word, despite that it’s used in the press release being sent to media members to promote her memoir. The release first states “Ping was deported,” and later repeats “Ping was exiled.”  

“In the beginning of the book I said the Chinese government quietly deported me,” she says. In fact, it is the first line. “We could say that was a literary interpretation. I was asked to leave. My father helped me to find a visa to the US. I was told not to talk about it or to file for political asylum. My interpretation was I involuntary left China….If someone wants to say this is not deportation, fine. That’s my interpretation.” Who asked her to leave? “The police,” she says.  

When I first interviewed her, Fu described being taken in by the police shortly before her college graduation, not being able to graduate and being asked to leave the country. She said, “I was told to leave, and I had two weeks.” I looked back at the timeline she presented and noticed that there was a span of six to seven years between when she took her Suzhou University entrance exam (1977) and arrived in the US (January 1984). When I asked her to confirm it, she says she didn’t start college until the fall of 1978, which she says would have put graduation in the fall of 1982, and that she got in trouble with the police in 1983. I asked: Isn’t there a timing gap of a year? “That’s true. That’s a good question,” Fu says. “Let me go back and verify that one.”  

Late last night, Fu’s publicist emailed me that they “confirmed that Ping started school in 1978 and left school in the fall of 1982 after being held by the government. She arrived in the U.S. on January 14, 1984.” So she was at home for over year before the police asked her to leave China? “The government asked Ping to leave a couple of weeks after her release,” the publicist wrote me. “However, getting a passport was very difficult, if not impossible, at that time. Even though Ping was asked to leave China, she had to wait for an official passport to be issued.”

The Debunking:
We will come back to her bizarre passport situation and story in later posts.

Unlike the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese government did not adopt the policy of deporting or exiling dissidents until well into the 1990s. In the early 1980s, China had just begun to open her doors and outside world was a mysterious place. The younger generation, and college students in particular, dreamed for opportunities to go abroad but that was out of reach to all but a very selected few at the time.

There were already many famous dissidents at the time, most remarkably the participants of the Democracy Wall movement around 1978. Closer to Fu Ping's timeline, there were many college students who got into bigger political trouble by participating in campus elections. None were deported. In fact, one famous artist who participated in the Democracy Wall movement and later married a French citizen had to fight her way all  the way to the top leadership for her right to leave China.

If Fu Ping's self-claimed political trouble could lead her to be deported, there would have been dozens if not hundreds of similar cases. Consequentially, there would have been an eruption of dissident movement as many people would view it as a shortcut for a lifetime dream. None of that happened.

It is possible that some people in low-level government positions may have said something to her along the line that "you better go abroad..." It would be difficult to speculate their motivations without circumstantial data. But they would unlikely be the "government orders" as she claimed.

Questionable Fact: Fu Ping's Arrest by Kidnapping

The Original Story:
On Pages 255-257 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping details how she was arrested because of her supposed research on infanticide:

One day in the fall of 1982, as I innocently walked across campus making preparations for graduation, someone sneaked up behind me, jammed a black canvas bag over my head, and bound my wrists together tightly. "Don't scream," a menacing male voice whispered as I was escorted into a nearby car. 

We drove for hours...

After 3 days of solitary confinement, she was released:

...As he drove me to my birth parents' apartment in Nanjing, we chatted a little. He told me that I had brought shame to our country because of my research on female infanticide, which had caused an international human rights uproar....

The Later Story:
After her story and timeline was questioned, Jenna Goudreau of Forbes reported that:

Late last night, Fu’s publicist emailed me that they “confirmed that Ping started school in 1978 and left school in the fall of 1982 after being held by the government. She arrived in the U.S. on January 14, 1984.”

The Debunking:
There are several serious questionable facts in this little story:

1. The timeline simply does not work. Fu Ping entered college in 1978, so she should have graduated and left school before summer of 1982, if not having already dropped out earlier. Since her publicist has specifically reconfirmed it, it can't be a typo. But how could she still be "making preparations for graduation" in her school in the fall of 1982? (Graduation schedules were very tightly controlled in China at the time.)
2. The geography does not work. If she was arrested in her school in Suzhou. Why did the police not sent her back to the school but drove her all the way to Nanjing upon release? It was not an easy drive in those days when there was not yet a modern highway.
3. Most importantly of all, why would the police chose such an extreme manner to execute the arrest? In early 1980s, it's pretty common that school authorities or police visited "troubled" students in the open and took them to offices for questioning. There was no need to stage a dramatic, mafia-style kidnapping.

Is this another one of Fu Ping's imagination emotional memory at work?

Fu Ping's Explanation:
On July 3, 2013, Fu Ping told Qiaobao that the "fall 1982" was a "typo" in the book and the arrest actually happened in the spring. She did not bother the explain further of her publicist's clarification and other issues within this story.

Broken Fact: Fu Ping's Years during Cultural Revolution

The Original Story:
Besides the various physical and mental abuses, including a grusome gang-rape, Fu Ping claimed to have suffered during the Cultural Revolution, in Bend, Not Break as well as numerous media interviews, Fu Ping maintained two main "facts" of her life in that terrible decade:

1. that she never received any formal education as in regular (the equivalent of K-12) schools
2. that she had been forced to work in factories, farms, and even be a "child soldier" in military camps

A couple of earlier media profiles of Fu Ping went so far as to claim that Fu Ping was sent to "concentration camp", "collective farm", or "labor camp", including the original title of the Forbes article that helped to start the controversy.

The Earlier Story:

There were no such claim in her earlier book Drifting Bottle. (This could be understandable since that book was published in China although it has been free and open to talk about sufferings during Cultural Revolution in China as well.) There were several casual mentions of regular education in China in that book, including this little sentence on Page 66:

I remember when I graduated from high school, all I wanted is to leave the warm cocoon of my parents. As if that as soon as I passed my 18th birthday, my wings became so strong that I had to fly. All the friends close to me were talking enthusiastically of how to fly freely. If not for an occasional hesitation at the time, I would have volunteered with a group of my classmates to go to Inner Mongolia for farming work.
记得高中毕业时，一心向往飞离父母的暖巢。仿佛一过十八岁，翅膀就硬得不飞不行了。而我身边的朋友，也都很起劲地商讨着如何去自由地飞翔。如果不是当时有一念之差，我就会跟着一群同学自愿去内蒙古垦荒了。

The Changing Story:

After her tale of forced labor being widely criticized, Fu Ping issued the following "clarification" on March 6, 2013:

Why did you say you were in a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution? 
I did not say or write that I was in a labor camp; I stated that I lived for 10 years in a university dormitory on the NUAA campus. Chinese children don't get put in labor camps. I also did not say I was a factory worker. I said Mao wanted us to study and learn from farmers, soldiers and workers. 

The Debunking:

The above clarification by Fu Ping is clearly a lie as there are many instances in her book that she stated she was a factory worker. Although the phrase "labor camp" did not appear in her book or recorded interviews, one might be able to forgive Forbe's Jenna Goudreau for acquiring that mistaken impression from the tales she had been telling. We will get through that in more detail in separate posts following this one.

There are also evidences as well as hints in her book that she had actually attended regular schools in those years just as every other kid in China did, except for the first couple of years of the Cultural Revolution. The Drifting Bottle paragraph shows that she graduated from high school and had close friends and classmates, a much more reasonable tale than that she is telling today.

Fu Ping's clarification is actually a big hint in itself. It is true that Mao wanted school pupils to "learn from farmers, soldiers, and workers" (学工学农学军) during the Cultural Revolution and a large portion of the school curriculum at the time was devoted to such activities instead of classroom teaching. It is also a fact, however, that all such activities were organized by schools. For Fu Ping to have participated in these learning-through-labor experiences, she would have been in regular schools at the time.

Fang Zhouzi: Fu Ping's "Legendary Life", Again

On February 1, 2013, Fang Zhouzi published a followup to his initial blog on Fu Ping's "legendary life". This post addresses a few issues on Jenna Goudreu's followup report on Forbes, in which she raised some of the questions to Fu Ping.

Fang Zhouzi also uncovered a report from a Chinese newspaper that Fu Ping had attended graduate school in China before leaving for USA. In those years as well as now, English is one of the tests students must pass to gain admission to graduate school. It's hard to imagine how Fu Ping passed that test when only knowing three English words.

　　由于福布斯的报道《从劳改犯到高科技企业家：傅苹的人生路》引起我对美国杰魔公司创始人、“奥巴马团队的人”傅苹在中国经历的注意，我根据她几年来接受美国媒体的采访以及其新书《弯而不折》（Bend, Not Break）中的说法，写了一篇质疑文章。很多中国读者纷纷在福布斯网站留言和在亚马逊写书评，指责傅苹是个骗子。傅苹新书在亚马逊的评分一夜之间从5分降到1.5分，有趣的是华人都给它打最低分1分，美国人都给它打最高分5分，并怀疑打低分的华人是被中国政府组织起来的五毛。 

　　福布斯中文网站一度把《从劳改犯到高科技企业家：傅苹的人生路》删除，后来把标题改成《从文化大革命到高科技企业家：傅苹的人生路》重新登出。但写该报道的记者Jenna Goudreau从众多质疑中挑了三个问题给傅苹，傅苹做了回答，完全是狡辩。我们先看第一个问题，傅苹文革期间，在她8～18岁时，是否在劳改队里呆了十年？傅苹将这归为翻译的问题： 

　　【傅苹告诉我，它直译成中文（即“劳改队”）就成了强制劳动的监狱场所之意，因此有失精准。但她也表示，从8岁开始，她确实曾在政府管理的一所撤空的大学校园内一个单间宿舍中，与妹妹相依为命。她证实，9岁时，她没有去上学，而是被分配到工厂干活。其自传的新闻稿称其曾为“儿童兵”（child soldier）以及“工厂工人”。而中国批评者质疑她是如何小小年纪就得以成为工厂工人的，在那时候，当工人是一种荣誉。对此，傅苹回应称，她当时并非中国传统意义上所指的“工人”，因为她并没有获得报酬，而是作为正规学校教育的一种替代。】 

　　傅苹的父母是南京航空学院的教师。所谓大学校园撤空，指的是文革期间大学教师下放到五七干校劳动，这是1968年10月开始的，1971年“九·一三事件”后，1972年春起教师们返校，各个高校恢复办学招收工农兵大学生，所以大学校园撤空的时间只有三年，而不是傅苹说的十年。何况据2005年她接受《公司》（Inc.）采访时的说法，1968年她母亲已被允许回校了（http://www.inc.com/magazine/20051201/ping-fu_pagen_6.html ），所以她和她妹妹相依为命的日子，最多也就几个月。据傅苹的发小Diana Luo的说法，在南航教师下放五七干校期间，教师子女被集中起来管理。这被傅苹说成了她及其妹妹作为黑帮子弟受红卫兵监禁。其实傅苹本人就是红卫兵，有她戴着红卫兵袖章，和其他红卫兵打着“红卫兵团”旗帜在南京灵谷寺游玩的合影为证（http://www.fastcompany.com/3004166/bend-not-break-leadership-lessons-resilience-amid-struggle ）。 

　　傅苹说她在文革整整十年都没有上学，而是从9岁起就分配到工厂工作。文革初期中、小学瘫痪，但1967年11月起开始“复课闹革命”，傅苹作为大学教师子女，一直不回校上学，不可思议。贫困家庭子女可能会退学去当童工贴补家用，但是傅苹又说她在工厂的工作没有报酬，这就莫名其妙了，她整个文革期间不上学在工厂里干了十年的义务劳动？ 

　　其实对文革有一点了解的人都知道，她所谓的在工厂不拿报酬工作，以及当“儿童兵”，就是当时的中小学生都经历过的短时间的学工、学军，那是当时正规学校教育的一部分，并不是惩罚，红卫兵、红小兵也都要学工、学军。她自己接受美国之音中文部采访时也说了“大多就是下乡、学农、学工那样的经历”。 

　　Goudreau说：
　　【另一个争议焦点是，她表示自己是被从中国放逐或驱逐出境的，但实际却不存在相应的官方记录。当我要求其对此给予回应时，她表示，“放逐”一词不对——虽然这是在发往媒体机构的宣传其新书的新闻稿中所使用的措辞。该新闻稿先是写到了“傅苹被驱逐出境（deported）”，随后又重复了一遍称，“傅苹遭到放逐（exiled）”。 

　　“在书的开头，我写了中国政府暗中驱逐了我。”她说。实际上就是该书开篇第一句话。“可以说这是一种文字上的演绎。我被要求离开。我的父亲帮我弄到了去美国的签证。我被告知不要谈论此事或者申请政治避难。我对此的理解是，我并非出于自愿而离开了中国……如果有人想说这不算驱逐出境，可以。但这就是我的解读。”那么要求她离开的是谁呢？“警方。”她说。】 

　　原来她所谓被中国政府驱逐出境和被放逐，只是她自己的“理解”。但是她此前在接受各种采访和书中，反反复复地说的是中国政府把她驱逐或放逐，其中一个版本甚至说她被硬塞进飞机送到新墨西哥大学（she was bundled on a plane and sent to the University of New Mexico, http://www.uiaa.org/illinois/news/illinoisalumni/0707_b.html）。 

　　好吧，我们姑且相信在她写了导致“联合国制裁中国”的论文之后，中国政府不是把她劳教、判刑，而是宽宏大量地要求她去在当时被中国人视为天堂的美国，但是Goudreau发现了在时间上有问题： 

　　【在第一次采访中，傅苹谈到她在大学毕业前夕被警方逮捕，没能毕业，并被要求离开中国。她说，“我被要求离开，而我只有两周时间。”我回溯了她所提供的时间线并发现，在她参加苏州大学入学考试（1977年）并抵达美国（1984年1月）之间存在六至七年的时间。当我要求就这一事实进行确认时，她表示，她到1978年秋才入学，她说这样一来毕业就是1982年，而她与警方发生纠缠是在1983年。我问：这其中不是有一年的时间间隔吗？“的确。问得好。”傅说，“让我回去确认一下。”】 

　　对这个人生重大转折点，傅苹居然一时想不起来是怎么回事了，需要想一想怎么回答。那她是怎么回答的呢？这回是由她的公关人员出面了： 

　　【昨晚，傅苹的公关人员发来电子邮件称，他们“确认傅苹于1978年入学，1982年秋在被政府扣押之后离校。她于1984年1月14日抵达美国。”也就是说，在警方要求她离开中国之前，她在国内待了一年多的时间？“在获释数周之后，政府要求她离开，”该公关人员在邮件中写道。“但在当时，要弄到护照，即便说不是不可能，但也是很难的。就算傅苹被要求离开中国，她也不得不等待护照发放下来。”】 

　　这就怪了，护照是在公安局办的，既然公安局命令她2周内离开中国，怎么又在办护照时刁难了她一年呢？这只能说明她其实是按正常程序申请的护照，而在上个世纪80年代，要申请因私护照是极为困难的，通常是要有海外关系。按Diana Luo的说法，傅苹的叔叔（或伯伯）在美国，她是通过其叔叔的资助到美国留学的。傅苹到美国一年以后，傅苹的妹妹也到了美国，难道也是被驱逐的？ 

　　从1982年大学本科毕业到1984年年初去美国留学这一年多时间内，傅苹也没有闲着。据《中国新闻》报去年的报道：“傅苹在恢复高考后进入苏州大学中文系，后到南京大学念比较文学硕士。”（http://epaper.chinanews.com/html/2012-03/14/content_3303.htm ）也就是说去美国之前她在南京大学读研究生。如果她惹上了政治麻烦，坐过牢，在当时的政治条件下，她怎么可能被录取上研究生？Goudreau怎么不去问问，那篇给她带来麻烦的关于其论文的《人民日报》报道，究竟登在哪一天的《人民日报》上？而且，从1978年中国恢复研究生招生开始，上研究生都要有入学考试的，初试科目都包括英语。如果傅苹只懂三个英语单词，她是怎么通过研究生入学考试的？ 

　　傅苹在1992年加入美国国籍。 

（http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=651214f929685310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=34165c2af1f9e010VgnVCM1000000ecd190aRCRD ）加入美国国籍需要至少有5年的永久居民身份，也就是说她最迟在1987年拿到美国绿卡。当时她是个还没有毕业的计算机系本科生，不可能办技术移民。当时她也还未结婚（1991年结婚），也不可能通过和美国公民结婚办绿卡。她能获得绿卡的唯一途径是申请政治避难。她在中国的恐怖经历应该就是当年为申请政治避难编造出来的。后来发现美国人很轻信，能博得同情心，有助于推销自己，就反复地讲。的确，她去年接受采访时，就说她的故事有助于在做生意时别人了解她（http://www.nctechnology.org/news/files/techpose/pingfu_techspose.pdf ）。当然还能树立起励志的高大形象，获得更多的社会尊重和荣誉。 

　　傅苹在去年被美国移民局授予“杰出归化美国人”（Outstanding American by Choice），这是极高的荣誉，一年只有5个人得。移民局介绍她在中国受的苦难与她接受采访时相同，甚至也说她是被中国驱逐出来的（不过换了另一个词，expel），不知是根据她归化时提交的材料，还是根据美国媒体的报道？授予她这个荣誉的原因很显然是她在中国经受的苦难与她在美国的成功形成了鲜明对比，是实现美国梦的典型。可惜这是一个虚假的梦。美国人也喜欢虚假的梦。所以即使没有一个中国人相信她的苦难故事，即使海外华人对她的质疑一浪高过一浪，也不会影响她在美国人心中的形象，不影响她这几天为了推销新书不停地接受美国各大媒体的采访，一遍又一遍地讲述她在中国的悲惨经历，不影响她的书成为美国畅销的励志书，感动无数的美国人，因为美国人、美国媒体愿意相信，即使那是个彻头彻尾的谎言。

Forbes: "Bend, Not Break" Author Ping Fu Responds to Backlash

After her initial profile of Fu Ping in Forbes received much "backlash" in questions about Fu Ping's story, Jenna Goudreau published a followup in Forbes on January 31, 2013 with Fu Ping and her publist's response to some of the questions. She also discovered a timeline gap in Fu Ping's story of her being exiled from China.

Last week, I published what I believed to be a story of one woman’s triumph against incredible odds. Ping Fu, founder of tech company Geomagic, which is in the process of being acquired by publicly traded 3D Systems, penned the new memoir Bend, Not Break (Portfolio/Penguin), detailing her story as a child during China’s Cultural Revolution who was separated from her parents, tortured and raped, assigned to work in factories rather than attend a formal school, and eventually deported to the US to make a new life for herself as an entrepreneur. Since the publication of my piece, first in English and then in Chinese on ForbesChina.com, along with coverage by other media outlets serious questions have been raised in the Chinese blogosphere and elsewhere about Fu’s credibility. 

Writers on my blog have been critical too. Commenter Fugang Sun wrote: “I experienced Culture Revolution and know a lot horrific stories happened in that era in person…. However, most of the stories listed in article are faked.” In the same vein, another skeptical commenter wrote: “There are already many voices questioning the validity of Ms. Fu’s story. From my view and experience it may very well be what it is: a story.” 

I followed up with Fu to get her response to the backlash. To accusations that she exaggerated or fabricated parts of her story, Fu says there were subtleties that were lost between the American and Chinese audiences. One point of contention was that a child would not have been sent to a “labor camp” (my word choice). Fu says in China this literally means a prison camp for forced labor and is inaccurate. However, she says she did live alone beginning at age 8 with her younger sister in a one-room dormitory at an evacuated university campus controlled by the government. She confirms that instead of going to school she was assigned to factory work at age 9. The press release for the memoir refers to her as a “child soldier” and a “factory worker.” However, Chinese critics questioned how she came to be a child factory worker, saying it was a prized job during that period. Fu responds that she was not a “worker” in the traditional Chinese understanding because she was not paid for this work and did it in lieu of formal schooling. 

It also raised eyebrows that she said she had been exiled or deported from China, when there is no official record of it. When I asked her to address it, Fu says “exile” is not the correct word, despite that it’s used in the press release being sent to media members to promote her memoir. The release first states “Ping was deported,” and later repeats “Ping was exiled.” 

“In the beginning of the book I said the Chinese government quietly deported me,” she says. In fact, it is the first line. “We could say that was a literary interpretation. I was asked to leave. My father helped me to find a visa to the US. I was told not to talk about it or to file for political asylum. My interpretation was I involuntary left China….If someone wants to say this is not deportation, fine. That’s my interpretation.” Who asked her to leave? “The police,” she says. 

When I first interviewed her, Fu described being taken in by the police shortly before her college graduation, not being able to graduate and being asked to leave the country. She said, “I was told to leave, and I had two weeks.” I looked back at the timeline she presented and noticed that there was a span of six to seven years between when she took her Suzhou University entrance exam (1977) and arrived in the US (January 1984). When I asked her to confirm it, she says she didn’t start college until the fall of 1978, which she says would have put graduation in the fall of 1982, and that she got in trouble with the police in 1983. I asked: Isn’t there a timing gap of a year? “That’s true. That’s a good question,” Fu says. “Let me go back and verify that one.” 

Late last night, Fu’s publicist emailed me that they “confirmed that Ping started school in 1978 and left school in the fall of 1982 after being held by the government. She arrived in the U.S. on January 14, 1984.” So she was at home for over year before the police asked her to leave China? “The government asked Ping to leave a couple of weeks after her release,” the publicist wrote me. “However, getting a passport was very difficult, if not impossible, at that time. Even though Ping was asked to leave China, she had to wait for an official passport to be issued.” 

When asked how she would respond generally to the criticism, Fu says: “Whatever the report, they should go with my book. Most people complaining have not read my book.” As of now, however, the book has not been translated or distributed in China.

Forbes: One Woman's Journey from China's Cultural Revolution to Top American Tech Entrepreneur

On January 23, 2013, Forbes published a profile of Fu Ping by Jenna Goudreau. The article was originally titled as "One Woman's Journey from Chinese Labor Camp to Top American Tech Entrepreneur." Two days later, its Chinese language version was published on Forbes China web site and attracted attention to many Chinese readers including Fang Zhouzi. Questions to Fu Ping's story were immediately raised and a controversy was born.

Forbes later changed the title to its current form. Jenna Goudreau responded by fact-checking with Fu Ping and discovered a few inconsistencies in her story, which was published in a follow up story in Forbes.

“I knew they were coming for me,” says Ping Fu. It was 1966, the beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao Zedong, and she was 8 years old. “I heard this huge noise in the courtyard and saw the Red Guard. Then I heard my mom crying, saying, ‘She’s so little.’ They grabbed me. I wasn’t even given a chance to hug my mom. I was taken away from Shanghai, the only home I knew.” 

[The original headline of this post has been changed to clarify that Ping Fu did not live in what is formally considered a Chinese labor camp.] 

Taken from her parents, Fu was left to fend for herself and her younger sister in a government-run dormitory in Nanjing, China, where she lived for nearly a decade. There, she was brainwashed, starved, tortured and gang raped, becoming a factory worker and without proper schooling. Years later, when the schools reopened, Fu began rebuilding her life as a student at Suzhou University. It was short-lived. A few months before graduation, her senior thesis research on female infanticide in China’s countryside caught the attention of the national press. She was imprisoned and sentenced to exile. 

Fu began her life in America broke, alone and knowing only three words of English. She put herself through school doing odd jobs and eventually earned a computer science degree, setting her up to become a leading innovator in the early dot-com era. In 1997, she launched tech firm Geomagic with her husband, creating 3D software to customize product manufacturing, from personalized shoes and prosthetic limbs to NASA spaceship repairs. By 2005, it had $30 million in revenues, and she was named Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year. 

Today Fu sits on President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and this month agreed to sell Geomagic to 3D printing leader 3D Systems, where she will be Chief Strategy Officer. With a bigger platform and the time ripe for 3D printing, she believes it’s finally within her reach to “revolutionize American manufacturing.” 

Her journey from Chinese labor camp to U.S. innovator is outlined in new memoir Bend, Not Break, a reliving that she calls both “horrific” and “healing.” She sat down with Forbes to discuss her dark past and how it shaped her into a resilient leader.

Cultivating Resilience In The Darkest Moments
“The country was in chaos,” Fu says of the China of her youth. Because she was born into a wealthy, intellectual family, her parents were sent to the countryside to be “re-educated” while she and her 4-year-old sister lived alone in a one-room dormitory at the mercy of Red Guard soldiers. “We were told we were nobody–that our parents committed a crime against the people, and we were here to redeem their sins,” she remembers. “They used mud and tree trunks to feed us. We were put in place to witness the killing of our teachers.” 

Her darkest moment came at age 10, when a group of boys chased her down, beat her unconscious and raped her. Rather than counseled and consoled, her peers started a rumor in the camp that she was a “broken shoe”—a Chinese expression for ruined woman. “Many days I thought death would be easier than living,” Fu says. “But I had a little sister. I didn’t know what would happen to her if I was to take my life or was careless and somebody else [did]. It was the responsibility that kept me going.” Instead of giving up, she threw herself into caring for her sister and her factory work. She also employed a surprising strategy to combat the “broken shoe” taunt: kindness. She studied her tormenters to learn their weaknesses, and then offered to help. Enemies quickly turned to friends. 

The resilience Fu cultivated in the darkest moments prepared her for her later years as a struggling start-up CEO. She says: “I am very good at self-learning because I didn’t go to school. Change doesn’t scare me. The ability to change, resilience, self-learning—those are the skills any entrepreneur needs to start a company.” 

Adapting To A Foreign Land
At age 25, Fu was given two weeks to leave the country. She flew to San Francisco with just $80, enough to buy a ticket to Albuquerque where she would study English at the University of New Mexico. But when she got to the airport counter, the ticket price had gone up. “I was $5 short and couldn’t get a ticket,” she recalls. “An American man standing behind me gave me the $5. I learned a lesson: Always err on the side of generosity.” 

With no friends or resources, Fu’s work ethic kicked in. Babysitting, house cleaning and waitressing earned enough to cover tuition and rent in a roach-infested apartment. She excelled at computer science–a man-made language that didn’t hinge on her understanding of English—and secured computer programming jobs first at start-ups and later at major corporations. She worked nonstop and became a star employee but had no life outside the office. “When I first came to America, I was very alone,” she says. “I didn’t have time for a social life. Later I became an entrepreneur, and found that the CEO job was very lonely. You have no peers when you’re at the top.” 

Later, romance blossomed with a mathematics professor, and Fu took a job at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to be near him. Her personal and professional lives were falling into place. She married, had a child and steered the future of computing technology. At NCSA she worked on early cloud computing models, computer animation and 3D printing technology. She managed the team, including now renowned Netscape entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, that created Mosaic software, the first user-friendly Web browser. Andreessen’s business success and evolving 3D printing capabilities gave Fu a wild idea: Geomagic. 

Learning To Be A Leader
“I call myself a reluctant entrepreneur,” says Fu. “At the time, my daughter was 4 years old. Starting a business is like giving birth to a baby. Once you have the child, you can’t put it back in your stomach.” Even so, everyone was talking about starting a tech company in the late ‘90s, and she’d become enamored with the idea of customized manufacturing. Rather than mass producing one item—a tennis shoe in standard sizes, for example–she envisioned mass producing unique items, each tailored to the customer’s individual needs. Geomagic created 3D mapping software that could make it a reality. 

As CEO of Geomagic, Fu excelled at pitching the vision to investors. Public humiliation by Red Guard soldiers erased any stage fright, she says. She raised $6.5 million and staffed up quickly. Still, the childhood brainwashing that she was “nobody” stuck with her, and business conferences filled with tall, white, male CEOs crippled her confidence. “I thought I needed to hire one of them to run the company,” she says. She brought in a star from IBM and demoted herself. Although he was capable, he didn’t have start-up experience and ran the company into the ground. “That’s when my survival instincts kicked in,” she says. In a matter of months, Geomagic secured three major contracts. Soon it was growing rapidly and expanding overseas with Fu at the helm. “Saving it built my self-confidence. I realized I can do this.” 

Fu says she didn’t plan to sell Geomagic, but the opportunity knocked and the timing may be right. “3D printing is the next big thing,” she says, adding that publicly traded 3D Systems will give her a larger platform to impact the industry. “It will completely change the way things are designed and made.” The technology already exists to print customized consumer products like accessories and shoes, construction materials and even meat (by printing the casing and stimulating natural growth). One cow could feed an entire nation, she says. 

What’s next for Ping Fu? “I want to do things that will today create jobs and contribute to the economy, but also tomorrow will help us be a sustainable society. I had a vision to advance and apply 3D technology for the benefit of humanity. That has never changed.”