Document: University of Illinois Letter on Fu Ping's Credential

In early February, 2013, Daily Kos' xgz made an inquiry to University of Illinois where Fu Ping had earned an MS degree in computer science. The response showed that the school believes Fu Ping had previously earned a BA degree from Suzhou University.

The following email was forwarded to xgz by Keely K Ashman of UIUC:

-----Original Message-----
From: Kelley, Mary Beth A
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 1:48 PM
To: Ashman, Keely K
Subject: RE: Inquiry about Ms. Ping Fu's MS degree 

Hi Keely 

We had a student by that name graduate with an MS from UIUC May 1990 and her Advisor was Jane Liu.  She also obtained a BA in Computer Science & Economics from the University of CA, San Diego in 1988 and a BA in Literature from Shuzou University-China in 1982.  Her original application file indicated she attended the University of New Mexico from 1984 to 1986, but no degree was awarded.  It appears her wiki page is missing some information. 

Mary Beth

-----Original Message-----
From: Ashman, Keely K
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 1:25 PM
To: Kelley, Mary Beth A
Subject: FW: Inquiry about Ms. Ping Fu's MS degree 

Mary Beth, 

Hi! How are you? I need to come over for a visit sometime soon so we can catch up!
Weird question, who would be able to find out if the student below graduated in 1988 with CS degree? Thanks! 

Keely K Ashman
Recruiting Assistant
Engineering Career Services
3275 Digital Computer Lab
1304 W. Springfield Ave.
Urbana, Il 61801
217-333-6454
kashman@illinois.edu

Fang Zhouzi: The Double Faced Political Correctness of New York Times in Ping Fu Affair

The following post was published by Fang Zhouzi in his Chinese blog on February 25 and translated into English by xgz. It's a direct response to the two articles by Didi Kirsten Tatlow.

The International Herald Tribune (the Global Edition of The New York Times) reporter Didi Kirsten Tatlow wrote two articles on the Ping Fu affair. One was published on the International Herald Tribune (www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/world/asia/21iht-letter21.html), the other was posted on the New York Times blog (rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/true-or-false-the-tussle-over-ping-fus-memoir/). The contrast between these two articles is like they were written by two different people. In the blog post, Tatlow did some investigation, which allowed readers to see how Ping Fu flip-flopped and twisted herself into a pretzel. However, in the newspaper article, Tatlow flip-flopped herself on behalf of Ping Fu, adopting the tactic of Ping Fu’s team to blame the so-called fallibility of memory, and further using the lack of openness of information about China as an excuse to claim that one cannot prove whether Ping Fu is lying. No wonder the co-author of Ping Fu’s memoir MeiMei Fox recommended the newspaper article on Twitter while ignoring the blog post. Ping Fu’s team may be under the impression that even if her memoir is full of errors, as long as one cannot prove that Ping Fu is intentionally lying, they win. 

In my previous article "Fu Ping’s Incredible American Story" I expressed hope that someone would go to the Albuquerque Police Department to check whether there was any record about Ping Fu being kidnapped by a Vietnamese Chinese. I was certain that no such record existed, because the story of being kidnapped from the airport by a Vietnamese Chinese to babysit for him for three days was a total fabrication. The most valuable point in Tatlow’s blog post, was that she checked with the Albuquerque Police Department. And, just as I expected, Albuquerque Police Department had no record of such a case. Ping Fu contended that she did not press charges against the Vietnamese Chinese. "I don’t know how they keep records," as if there would not be a police record simply if she did not press charges. Anyone with a little bit of knowledge of the US would know that this is impossible. First of all, kidnapping is a felony. Even if Ping Fu as the victim did not cooperate with the police, the police would not automatically close the case. Secondly, even if they closed the case, there would still be the records of the 911 call, the sending of the officers, and the police interview. Furthermore, this case involved three abandoned children. The police had to find social services to deal with the children, which means a lot of paperworks. There had to be a big paper trail. The fact that no record exists only means that the case never happened. Ping Fu made up the whole thing. 

Ping Fu blamed inconsistencies in interviews of her and in her memoir on memory lapses, and also blamed them on American reporters misunderstanding her meaning and their undisciplined writing. I predicted that Ping Fu would next make her co-author MeiMei Fox a scapegoat. Sure enough, Ping Fu blamed some mistakes in her memoir on poor communication with Fox, on exaggerations by Fox, on Fox’s ignorance in Chinese geography, and on Fox using incorrect material found on the internet - inadvertently revealing that the so-called memoir was not based entirely on Ping Fu’s own memory. Ping Fu even complained that Fox ignored her requests to correct mistakes. I gave an example of Ping Fu’s reckless fabrication in a previous article "A Habitual Liar Ping Fu”: Ping Fu said in her memoir that after China began to implement the one-child policy in 1982, all female students at Suzhou University were checked every month by university officials, who inserted their fingers into the vaginas of the students to check for menstrual blood. Now Ping Fu is changing the story to that what she meant was that the university officials asked the students to put their own finger into the vagina to check their menstrual blood, that Fox made a mistake, and that she tried to correct it three times to no avail. 

Even conceding that Ping Fu originally meant to say that the officials asked the students check their own menstrual blood for them to see, does that make this story believable? Not at all. First, there were thousands of female students at Suzhou University at the time, but no one ever came out and said there had been such a bizarre thing. On the contrary, several female students who studied at Suzhou University at that time came out and said such humiliating things never happened. Second, the family planning policy would have been targeted at married women,  not at female students in college, almost all of whom were unmarried in the early 1980’s. Checking for unmarried pregnancy at that time would not have been because of family planning. Unmarried girls who got pregnant would be punished for their immoral behavior, not for violating family planning policy. Third, to detect unmarried pregnancy, checking menstruation would be both laborious and inaccurate. Because there were many female students and their menstrual periods were not synchronous, the students needed to be checked everyday. Even if a female student did not have her period, it didn’t necessarily mean that she was pregnant. Menstrual irregularity is quite common. If the university’s purpose for detecting pregnancy was not to provide prenatal care as soon as possible, but to force abortion, then why did they need to know so early? Why not wait until there would be obvious signs of pregnancy? How compromised must one’s intelligence be to believe a story of checking for menstrual blood (either by self-fingering or fingering by others)? And how perverse must the storyteller be to concoct such a story? 

After the Guardian reported that Professor Cheng Yinghong, who attended the same university with Ping Fu, never heard of the student publication Red Maple edited by Ping Fu, she now changed her story to say that she remembered wrong, and that she was involved in editing a student publication called Hook of Wu (Tatlow incorrectly translated it as No Hook). Ping Fu spent considerable lengths in her book to describe how while in college she organized a student club called Red Maple (also attached a photo of club members), and acted as the chief editor of (now she changed to "participated in editing") a student publication named Red Maple, and how famous this publication was both within and outside the campus. In 1979 student representatives who attended a meeting of college student publishers each held a copy of Red Maple, and went to meet Deng Xiaoping, who took a look at the magazine, which had an anti-party article that attracted his attention, and therefore the chief editor Ping Fu suffered the consequences... Now Ping Fu is telling us that she remembered incorrectly the name of this famous publication. Ping Fu claimed that this is an example “that shows everyone’s memory can be wrong". But I do not believe that someone would misremember the name of their own college publication which they acted as a chief editor. Moreover the names Hook of Wu and Red Maple are neither similar in pronunciation nor in meaning. How could one misremember Hook of Wu as non-existent Red Maple? 

Ping Fu also changed her story about what magazine the representatives to the 1979 meeting of the national college publishers were holding. It was not Red Maple, but This Generation instead. I have to point out that Ping Fu “remembered incorrectly" again. This Generation was a joint publication published after the meeting, and was printed by Wuhan University. Jiangsu Teachers College, where Ping Fu was a student, took no part in it. In fact, Jiangsu Teachers College sent no representative to the meeting. This Generation had only one issue. Its publication license was revoked because of two poems, rather than an "anti-party" article titled “A Confession of a Communist Party Member” as claimed by Ping Fu. There was no article with that title in the only issue of This Generation. 

Sing Tao Daily said that Ping Fu obtained her green card through political asylum when it reported Ping Fu’s "Outstanding American by Choice” award, and people suspected that her initial motive for fabricating her persecution in China was to apply for political asylum. Ping Fu said that she obtained the green card by marrying a U.S. citizen: September 1, 1986, she married a U.S. citizen in California and divorced three years later. She said that her reason for not mentioning this marriage before was to protect this American. Protecting from what? Did she already foresee that her memoir would be criticized and lies exposed? The real reason for hiding this marriage in all interviews and in her memoir may not be so honorable. Searching marriage registration records one finds that someone named Ping Fu and Richard Lynn Ewald married on September 10, 1986, not in California, but in Las Vegas, Nevada - a marriage and divorce paradise. The procedure there is extremely simple. In U.S. movies, television shows, and literature, going to Las Vegas to get married is often depicted as not being serious about it. This marriage after she was less than two years in the US seemed almost non-existent for Ping Fu, and her memoir reflects it: 

“I was almost thirty years old and had no personal life. It had been more than 5 years since I'd landed in the United States, yet I still wondered, what was an American life exactly? I had much to learn and to experience if I wanted to make this country my home.... what finally transformed my personal life was not a class I took or a book I read. It was something totally unplanned and unrelated to these well-intentioned, purposeful efforts to make myself ‘fit in’: a romance. " 

Ping Fu was already married with the American Richard Lynn Ewald for two years when she was 30 years old. Yet she complained about having no personal life, not knowing what American life was like, and still waiting for a romance. It took a romance with an Austrian (her second husband) for her to integrate into the American society. This means that the marriage between her and Richard Lynn Ewald was in name only; it had nothing to do with love, but had everything to do with the green card. To prevent fraudulent green card applications through sham marriages with American citizens, U.S. immigration law only approves a temporary green card initially for someone who marries an American. The official green card can be applied after two years of marriage. And it takes a few months more for the official green card to be approved. They can divorce as soon as the official green card is approved. So this type of green card marriage often lasts only three years. 

Tatlow said in her article on the International Herald Tribune that although some of Ping Fu’s experiences sounded weird, they could still be true. The article used as an example what Ping Fu described as her research in infanticide for her thesis which angered the government and led to her imprisonment for three days through a kidnapping carried out by police. Tatlow provided two "evidence": 

One "evidence" was from Ping Fu who produced a letter sent by one of her classmates in May 1982. The letter mentioned that Ping Fu suddenly left college without graduating, and the reason given by the school was that Ping Fu suffered a nervous breakdown due to breakup of a relationship. Ping Fu claimed that it was a politically motivated cover-up, and that the real reason was because she wrote an article on infanticide in rural areas due to the one-child policy which after being picked up by the newspapers, created an international outcry and caused her trouble with the authority. 

This story can not withstand scrutiny. First the timing was wrong. The letter was written in May 1982. But according to Ping Fu’s memoir, she was detained for her thesis in the fall of 1982. Earlier this month, in a reply to a Forbes reporter's question her publicist also "confirmed” that Ping Fu "left school in the fall of 1982 after being held by the government." So what was mentioned in the letter in May about her suddenly leaving school could not have been about her detention. Second, Ping Fu’s memoir also mentioned "leaving school due to nervous breakdown before graduation," but it was an excuse made up by her mother and her to avoid being assigned a job outside the city, rather than a political cover-up by the school. 

The other "evidence" provided by Tatlow was a New York Times report on April 11, 1983 which mentioned a March 3, 1983 People's Daily report saying that "the phenomena of butchering, drowning and leaving to die female infants and maltreating women who have given birth to female infants have been very serious." I do not know why Tatlow considered this as evidence. The People's Daily report was on March 3, 1983, half a year after Ping Fu’s alleged imprisonment in late fall of 1982. The title of the report was "Comrade Leader of the All China Women's Federation Responds to a Letter from 15 Women in Anhui Province, Calls on all Sectors of Society to Fight against Patriarchal Thinking and Behavior." It was a response to a letter to the editor published by the newspaper on February 23 titled "We Demand a Second Liberation" which did not contain anything about female infanticide. The newspaper report only mentioned in passing that “in the past two years, the All China Women's Federation has received many materials and letters from various places that reported the shocking phenomena of drowning and abandoning female infants and maltreating women who have given birth to female infants. This has become a serious social problem" (the People's Daily article did not use the word “butchering", which was arbitrarily added by the New York Times). Therefore, neither the time of the report nor its content were in any way connected to the so-called thesis by Ping Fu. 

Ping Fu claimed that her thesis was the first report of the phenomenon of female infanticide caused by the implementation of the one-child policy in China, and that because of the UN sanctions, the Chinese government placed the blame on her. 

In fact, prior to the time that Ping Fu claimed to have finished her thesis (1982), there were already official Chinese newspaper reports on female infanticides due to the implementation of the one-child policy, and these reports were republished by the US media: According to 1981 Executive Intelligence Reviews, China’s Population Research Quarterly and the South China Daily both reported that the one-child policy had led to the crime of infanticide (EIR Volume 8, Number 12, March 24, 1981, page 49, Volume 8, Number 13, March 31, 1981, page 54, and EIR Volume 8, Number 21, May 26, 1981, page 50). If the Chinese government wanted to blame someone, the last person they could blame was Ping Fu. Since both before and after Ping Fu’s thesis was completed, China's newspapers had been reporting infanticides, it was clearly not a sensitive topic. Why would the government grab Ping Fu and deport her? 

Tatlow claimed that before China opens all its files and allows an open debate, there would be no way to know whether Ping Fu was telling the truth. 

Are the US archives open enough? Is public debate allowed in the US? The Albuquerque police could not find any record of Ping Fu’s kidnapping. But it took only one sentence "I don’t know how they keep records" from Ping Fu to shut Tatlow up, even though Tatlow knew full well whether the Albuquerque police should have the records, and whether Ping Fu was lying about this. 

In fact, Ping Fu’s incredible China stories did not involve any state secrets, and can be exposed as lies from publicly available information. There was no need to wait for "opening files and allowing public debates" in the distant future. One should not blame everything on China not being open and free, although doing this is very politically correct. Even worse is to ignore the basic facts right in front of one’s own eyes, just for the sake of being politically correct, which is often the tendency of some Western journalists. 

At the least, even if it is difficult to verify the truthfulness of every old story told by Ping Fu, by just looking at how she told new lies about what just happened, one can tell that she is a habitual liar without any credibility. Just a few days earlier she told the Guardian that her critics should not be called a smear campaign, now she complained to Tatlow that she was being smeared. And her complaints were filled with lies: "They tried to get my daughter’s name from the Internet"- in fact, her daughter's name is on the first page of her memoir. "They sent people to Shanghai and surrounded my house, and to Nanjing to harass my neighbors” - I reposted the photo of the mansion that Ping Fu claimed was her Shanghai home, and asked people to locate it to see if it was real. Although several people looked in Shanghai, no one was able to locate this house. How could anyone have surrounded the house? There were indeed someone who went to ask questions about Ping Fu to her Nanjing neighbors, but the neighbors did not think it was harassment. Instead they testified that Ping Fu was lying. She said that her second exhusband, Herbert Edelsbrunner, received a lot of "hate mails"- What I saw was that people who criticized Ping Fu expressed sympathy to Edelsbrunner, feeling that the credit due him was stolen by Ping Fu. Who would send him "hate mails "? Perhaps they were from Ping Fu supporters? 

Recently Ping Fu was interviewed by a local media, News & Observer (www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/23/2699216/geomagic-founder-ping-fu-says.html), which is located at the same place as her own company. In this interview she continued to lie, saying that she had been the target of internet terrorist attacks, saying that the smear campaign against her started the day after the New York Times report about the Chinese hacker army - in fact, a quick check can show that the New York Times report was later; saying that I launched a smear campaign, and that in the second or third article, I had said, "I do not care whether she is the victim (of the smear campaign), my target is the Western media" - Where did I ever say that? 

Tatlow, do you believe that you also need to politically correctly wait for China to open its files and allow public debates to decide whether Ping Fu lied about what just happened?
In 1996, Ping Fu published a memoir in China, Drifting Bottles - American Sketches (Hubei Children Publishing House), authored entirely by herself. In the Chinese memoir, what Ping Fu described about her life in China and in the United States, are exactly the opposite of what she described in her English memoir. This further proves that we are right to question her: She is a liar. In future articles, I will compare Ping Fu’s Chinese and English memoirs. I also hope that Tatlow can go to the National Library in Beijing to borrow a copy of Drifting Bottles - American Sketches, read it (Tatlow said she could read and write Chinese), and write a follow-up report - this book is publicly available now, you do not need to wait for the future.

　　《国际先驱论坛报》（《纽约时报》的国际版）记者Didi Kirsten Tatlow写了两篇关于傅苹事件的文章，一篇登在《国际先驱论坛报》上（www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/world/asia/21iht-letter21.html ），一篇登在该报的博客上（http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/true-or-false-the-tussle-over-ping-fus-memoir/ ）。对比这两篇文章，几乎就像是两个人写的。在博客文章中，Tatlow做了一些调查，让我们得以听到傅苹是如何再次改变说辞进行狡辩的，然而在报纸文章中，Tatlow却自己为傅苹狡辩起来，采纳了傅苹团队所谓记忆错误的说法，以中国信息不公开为由声称无法证明傅苹是不是在说假话。难怪傅苹自传的共同作者MeiMei Fox在推特上推荐这篇报纸文章却无视那篇博客文章，在傅苹团队的人看来，即便傅苹回忆录充满了错误，只要不能证明傅苹是有意说谎，就是胜利。 

　　在《傅苹的“美国传奇”》一文中，我表示希望有人能去Albuquerque警察局查查有没有傅苹被越南华人绑架的记录，而且我敢肯定是找不到任何记录的，因为所谓在机场被越南华人绑架去当了三天保姆就是胡编的一个故事。Tatlow博客文章中最有价值的一点，就是她去向Albuquerque警察局查了，而且如我所料，Albuquerque警察局并没有这个案子的记录。傅苹的狡辩是，她当时没有要求起诉那个越南华人，“我不知道警察局是怎么保存记录的。”似乎她不要求起诉警察局就不会有这个案子的记录。只要有点美国社会常识的人就知道这是不可能的事。首先，绑架是重罪，即使傅苹作为受害者不与警方合作，警方也不会因此就不立案。其次，即使不立案，也会有报警、出警、审讯的记录，而且这个案子还涉及到三个被遗弃的小孩，警方需要找社会服务机构处理，更会涉及到一大堆文书，必然会有很多记录。没有任何记录，只能说明这个案子从来就没有发生过，完全是傅苹捏造出来的。 

　　傅苹对自己在采访、回忆录中的错误，除了归咎于记忆错误，还怪罪给美国记者误解了她的意思而乱写。我曾指出傅苹接下来会把共同作者MeiMei Fox当替罪羊。果不其然，傅苹将其回忆录中的一些错误怪罪给Fox与她交流不善、用词夸张、不懂中国地理和只是在互联网上找不正确的资料来用——无意中透露了这本所谓回忆录并非完全根据傅苹的回忆，而是从网上找资料拼凑而成。傅苹甚至埋怨Fox不按她的要求进行改正。我在《习惯性说谎者傅苹》中举了一个傅苹回忆录胡编乱造的例子：傅苹在其书中说，1982年中国开始实行一胎化政策后，苏州大学的全体女生每个月都要被大学官员把手指插入阴道检查有没有经血。现在傅苹改口说，她本来说的是大学官员要求女生自己把手指插入阴道检查有没有经血，Fox写错了，她改正了三次都没有改过来。 

　　就算傅苹本来的意思是官员让女生自己查经血让他们看，这个故事就可信吗？并不。第一，苏州大学当时应该有上千名女生，却从来没有哪个出来说曾经发生过这么离奇的事情，反而有当时在苏州大学读书的女生出来说从未发生过这种污辱人的事。第二，计划生育政策针对的是已婚妇女，当时在校女生几乎都是未婚，根本就不会在她们身上执行计划生育。如果要查未婚怀孕的话，那也不是因为计划生育，未婚怀孕的女生会因为不道德而不是因为违反计划生育政策而受到处罚。第三，真的要查女生是否未婚怀孕的话，查月经是费力而不准确的做法。因为有那么多的女生，而她们的月经并不同步，这就意味着每天都要女生都查一遍。即使某个女生当月没来月经，也不能说明她就是怀孕，因为月经不规则是常有的是。学校查女生怀孕的目的不是为了尽早做孕期保健，而是为了强迫人流，那么迫不及待地想知道女生是否怀孕干什么呢？完全可以等到有了大肚子等明显怀孕特征后再采取行动。相信这么个普查月经（不管是自查还是他查）的人智力该有多么低下，而编造这个荒唐故事的人心理该有多么变态？ 

　　在《卫报》报道当时与傅苹同校同系的程映虹教授从未听说过傅苹主编的学生刊物《红枫》后，傅苹现在改口说，她记错了，她大学时参与编辑的学生刊物叫做《吴钩》（Tatlow错误地把它翻译成"No Hook"——《无钩》）。傅苹在书中花了相当长的篇幅来介绍她如何在大学期间组织一个叫红枫的学生社团（还附了一张社团成员合影），主编（现在改口是“参与编辑”）一份叫《红枫》的学生刊物，这份刊物当时如何在校内外闻名，1979年参加全国大学生刊物会议的代表人手一册《红枫》，拿着它去见邓小平，被邓小平拿去看，上面一篇反党文章引起了邓小平的注意，主编傅苹因此遭殃……现在傅苹告诉我们她记错了这份著名刊物的名字。傅苹声称这是一个“任何人记忆都会出错”的例子，但我不相信会有人连自己在大学时代主编的刊物的名称都会记错。何况《吴钩》和《红枫》不论是读音还是意思都没有任何相似之处，怎么会把《吴钩》记成了不存在的《红枫》？ 

　　傅苹也改口说，1979年参加全国大学生刊物会议的代表拿的不是《红枫》，而是《这一代》。我不得不要指出，傅苹又“记错”了。《这一代》是在这次会议之后才出版的联合刊物，而且是由武汉大学出的，与傅苹所在的江苏师范学院没有任何关系。事实上，江苏师范学院并无代表去参加会议。《这一代》只出了一期就被停刊，停刊的原因是里面的两首诗，而不是傅苹说的那篇“反党”文章，《这一代》上面也没有那篇题为《一个共产党员的自首》的文章。 

　　《星岛日报》在去年报道傅苹被评为“杰出归化美国人”时曾说她是靠申请政治避难获得的绿卡，因此人们怀疑她编造如何在中国受迫害的最初动机是为了申请政治避难。现在傅苹说，她是靠和美国公民结婚获得的绿卡：在1986年9月1日她在加州和一个美国公民结婚，三年后离婚。她说她此前之所以对这次婚姻只字不提是为了保护这个美国人。她在保护这个美国人什么呢？难道她已预见到她的回忆录会受到批评、揭露？她在所有的履历、采访和回忆录中隐瞒这段婚姻的真实原因可能并不那么光彩。搜索婚姻登记记录可以知道在1986年9月10日有一个叫Ping Fu的人和Richard Lynn Ewald结婚，但不是在加州，而是在内华达州的拉斯维加斯——那里是结婚和离婚的天堂，手续极其简便，在美国影视、文学作品中，跑到拉斯维加斯结婚往往被当成结婚不严肃的表现。傅苹这段她才到美国两年多就结上的婚姻对她来说就像几乎不存在一样，这是她在回忆录里自己表露出来的： 

　　“我几乎30岁了，却没有个人生活。自从我抵达美国5年多已经过去了，但是我还在疑惑，究竟什么是美国生活？如果我要把这个国家当家的话我还有很多要学习和体验的。……最终转变我的个人生活的，不是我上的某门课程或我读过的某本书。而是某种完全没有计划的，与有意让我自己‘融入’无关的东西：一次罗曼史。” 

　　傅苹30岁的时候已与美国人Richard Lynn Ewald结婚了两年，她却还在抱怨自己没有个人生活，不知道什么是美国生活，还在等着来一次罗曼史，与一个奥地利人（她的第二任丈夫）的罗曼史才让她融入了美国社会。这说明她与Richard Lynn Ewald的婚姻名存实亡，与爱情无关，而与绿卡有关。为了防止靠与美国人假结婚骗取绿卡，美国移民法规定与美国人结婚后一开始只能获得临时绿卡，结婚两年后才能申请转为正式绿卡，等正式绿卡批下来又要过几个月，拿到正式绿卡就可以离婚了，所以这种绿卡婚姻往往只持续三年。 

　　登在《国际先驱论坛报》上的Tatlow文章说傅苹的某些经历虽然听上去很怪异，但是有可能是真的。它举了傅苹说她由于其研究杀婴的大学毕业论文激怒了政府，被公安绑架囚禁了三天一事。Tatlow给出了两条“证据”： 

　　一个“证据”是傅苹出示了她的一个同学在1982年5月写给她的一封信。信中提到傅苹突然没有毕业就离校，校方说是傅苹由于失恋而精神失常。傅苹声称，那是一个政治掩盖行为，实际上她由于写了一篇关于一胎化政策导致农村普遍杀溺婴的论文，被报纸报道后，国际舆论大哗，给她带来了麻烦。 

　　这个说法经不起推敲。首先是时间对不上。这封信是1982年5月写的，而傅苹在其自传中声称她由于论文遭到关押是1982年秋天的事，本月初傅苹的公关人员答复《福布斯》记者的采访时也“确认”傅苹“1982年秋在被政府扣押”。所以5月份信里提到的她突然离校不可能指的是她被关押。其次，傅苹自传中也提到了“因精神失常不毕业就离校”一事，但是是她妈和她为了避免毕业被分配到外地而编造出来的一个借口，而不是校方的政治掩盖行为。 

　　Tatlow给的另一个“证据”是，《纽约时报》在1983年4月11日报道说，1983年3月3日《人民日报》的报道称“当前残杀、溺杀、遗弃女婴和虐待生女婴的妇女的现象非常严重，已成为一个严重的社会问题”。 

　　我不知道为什么Tatlow会把这当成证据。《人民日报》的报道是1983年3月3日，距离傅苹说她被监禁的时间1982年秋晚了半年。该报道标题是《全国妇联负责同志就安徽十五名妇女来信发表谈话 呼吁社会各方面与重男轻女的思想和行为作斗争》，是对2月23日该报刊登的一封反映生女孩的母亲在农村遭到歧视的读者来信《我们要求第二次解放》的回应，来信中并没有涉及溺杀女婴的内容，该报道也只是顺便提了一句“近两年来，全国妇联曾不断收到各地寄来的材料和群众来信，反映当前溺弃女婴和虐待生女婴的妇女的现象十分突出，已成为一个严重的社会问题”（《人民日报》的原文并没有“残杀”一词，那是《纽约时报》擅加的）。所以该报道的时间、内容无论如何与傅苹的所谓论文扯不上关系。 

　　傅苹声称，她的毕业论文是中国首次报道中国由于实行一胎化政策导致杀女婴现象，由于引起了联合国制裁，中国政府才怪罪到她头上。 

　　实际上，在傅苹声称其完成论文的时间（1982年）之前，中国报刊都已正式报道过实行一胎化政策导致杀女婴现象，而且被美国媒体转载：1981年Executive Intelligence Reviews报道说，中国《人口研究》季刊和《南方日报》都报道一胎化政策导致杀女婴这一犯罪行为 (EIR Volume 8, Number 12, March 24, 1981, page 49, Volume 8, Number 13, March 31, 1981, page 54, and EIR Volume 8, Number 21, May 26, 1981, page 50)。中国政府要怪，怎么也怪不到傅苹。既然在傅苹论文完成的之前和之后，中国的报刊都在报道杀女婴的事，可见这并非敏感话题，怎么可能因此去抓傅苹并把她驱逐出境？ 

　　Tatlow声称，在中国开放档案和允许公开辩论之前，没法知道傅苹说的是不是事实。 

　　美国档案够开放了吧？公开辩论也是允许的吧？但是Albuquerque警方找不到傅苹被绑架的记录，傅苹一句“我不知道警察局是怎么保存记录的”不也让Tatlow不敢说她说谎？虽然Tatlow应该很清楚Albuquerque警方该不该有记录。 

　　事实上，傅苹的中国传奇故事根本不涉及国家机密，根据现有的公开资料就可以认定傅苹说谎，哪里用得着去等遥遥无期的“中国开放档案和允许公开辩论”？你不能把什么事都归咎于中国不开放、不自由，虽然那样做很政治正确。更不能为了政治正确，就无视眼前的基本事实，虽然某些西方记者习惯这么做。 

　　退一步说，就算傅苹所说的陈年往事的真实性难以给出确切的答案，那么看看傅苹对刚刚发生的事是如何造谣、说假话的，也可以认定这是个没有信用的习惯性说谎者。她前几天才向《卫报》说她不应该把对她的批评称为抹黑行动，现在又对Tatlow控诉起她是如何遭到了抹黑了，但谎话连篇：“他们试图从网上得到我女儿的名字”——其实她女儿的名字在其自传的第一页上就有；“他们派人到上海包围我的家庭，到南京骚扰我的邻居”——我在网上转了傅苹声称是其上海老家的豪宅照片，请人去找找看那究竟在哪里、有没有这样的豪宅，虽然有多名网友去找过，到现在也还没找着，怎么去包围？的确有人问了傅苹在南京的邻居关于傅苹的事，但是邻居并不觉得是被骚扰，反而作证说傅苹在说谎；她说她的第二任离异丈夫Herbert Edelsbrunner收到了许多“憎恨信件”——我看到的是，批评傅苹的人如果提到Edelsbrunner都是同情他的，觉得他的功劳被傅苹霸占了，谁会去给他寄“憎恨信件”？难道是傅苹的支持者寄的？ 

　　傅苹近日接受其公司所在地一家媒体News & Observer的公关采访(http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/23/2699216/geomagic-founder-ping-fu-says.html )，继续造谣，说她遭到了互联网恐怖主义攻击，说对她的抹黑行动是在《纽约时报》报道了中国黑客部队之后的第二天开始的——其实只要稍微查一下就知道《纽约时报》的那篇报道是后来的；说我发动了抹黑行动，说我在第二或第三篇文章里说“我才不在乎她成为（抹黑行动的）受害者，我的目标是西方媒体”——我在哪篇文章里这么说过？ 

　　Tatlow，你认为要傅苹在这些刚刚发生的事情上撒谎，也需要政治正确地等到中国开放档案和允许公开辩论之后吗？ 

　　傅苹1996年在中国出版了一本她本人一个人写的自传《漂流瓶——旅美散记》（湖北少年儿童出版社出版）。在这本中文自传里，傅苹叙述她在中国和在美国的生活，与她现在在英文回忆录里所说的，截然相反，更证明了我们对她的质疑是对的：这是个骗子。在后面的文章中，我就把傅苹的中文自传和英文回忆录做个对比。我也希望Tatlow能去北京国家图书馆把《漂流瓶——旅美散记》借来读读（Tatlow说她能读、写中文），写一篇追踪报道——这本书是公开可借的，不用留待将来。

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。

xgz: Guardian Exposes More Lies in Ping Fu's "Memoir"

The following post was published by xgz on his The Daily Kos blog on February 14, 2013:

Making good use of resources real journalists have, the Guardian has joined the fray in the controversy regarding Ping Fu's autobiography, Bent, not Break: A Life in Two Worlds. 

Joining in the criticism of her book are some of the most respected China experts in the world, including Prof. Perry Link, a world renowned expert on modern Chinese literature at the University of California at Riverside and Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, Prof. Yinghong Cheng, a professor of history at Delaware State University, and Prof. Therese Hesketh of University College London, an expert on population controls in China. 

With the help from these experts, the article raised new questions about the book, not raised in my previous series of diaries. Anyone following this controversy should read the article. 

Below is a short summary of the key points in the Guardian article.

For background information, please read my previous diaries: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, and Part VIII. 

In my previous diaries, I had to rely mostly on Ping Fu's own words and common knowledge such as the history and geography of Nanjing and Shanghai to refute Ping Fu's lies. Some events described in her book, including the Red Maple Society and the infanticide thesis, I could not refute because I did not have any concrete evidence, although those claims looked suspicious. The article in Guardian was able to refute these claims with the help of experts. 

About the Red Maple Society, Ping Fu said in the book that they sent a representative to Beijing for a meeting organized by publishers:

The government decided at the last minute to ban the gathering of the ten universities, deeming it illegal. Instead, it was announced that china's de facto leader, Deng Xiaoping, would receive the representatives for a private meeting. 

This was when things went terribly wrong.

The Guardian article showed that the above claim was completely false:

Perry Link, an expert on modern Chinese literature at the University of California at Riverside, said student magazine representatives met in 1979, but added: "I do not believe for a moment that Deng Xiaoping ever came near the group." 

Neither he nor others knows of a representative from Fu's group, Red Maple, attending. Fu said she believed the article was selected for This Generation, the joint publication from the meeting, but Link's copy shows it is not included.

And even the existance of the Red Maple Society was questioned by someone who was there:

Yinghong Cheng, now a professor of history at Delaware state university, studied at the same time and in the same building at Suzhou as Fu, and had his own literary group. He told the Guardian: "I am completely unaware of that group [Red Maple] and publication, and if it had been that popular I would have known about it."

Ping Fu countered this criticism with another ridiculous lie:

Fu, who supplied a copy of her magazine, said her contemporaries might not have heard of the society because it was underground. She said Deng met the representatives at the same time as Communist Youth League leaders, noting that she was told about the meeting and was not present.

Sure, an underground magazine would send a representative to Beijing to be received by the paramount leader himself, bringing with him a copy of the magazine that was supposed to be secret. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? 

As for Ping Fu's claim that she personally witnessed hundreds of baby killings:

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

The glaring out of time, out of place errors notwithstanding (in 1982 there were few plastic bags in China, and most places did not have garbage bins), here is what Guardian says about the claim:

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."

Finally, perhaps the most ridiculous claim in the whole book, as described by the Guardian:

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.

I had not noticed this detail myself. Good catch, Guardian! 

I am glad that finally journalists are starting to do their job in this case. We can tell Chinese people now that free press indeed works. Thank you!

xgz: Why are We Suckers for Lies? A Psychological Explanation

The following post was published by xgz on his The Daily Kos blog on February 10, 2013:

The main part of this diary came from a comment by a reader Lang Lang on a book review of Ping Fu's Bend, not Break: A Life in Two Worlds. 

For more background, please read my previous diaries, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, and Part VII. 

Some may ask why such an obsession with someone's autobiography. Well, at the beginning I was only planning to write three diaries and that would be it. The accusation that critics of Ping Fu, including myself, were shills for the Chinese government, and we were running a coordinated smear campaign, made me continue. That the media could be so prejudiced against a minority group so easily, on no evidence whatsoever, is rather unusual. This angered me and made me decide to carry this series further, to fully expose all the lies of Ping Fu. The mistreatment from the media and fellow Americans just gave us more determination. It also tells us that the mainstream media and the mainstream culture are so susceptible to liars, that they often choose to believe the liars than people who expose them. 

Below is an analysis why Americans are more likely to believe liars. 

Update: Here is the newest example of media coverage (to be fair, it's British, but just as biased).

1, Association/reprehensive/stereotype tendency
Association is one of the most powerful psychological tendencies hardwired into human brains by genes. It is developed by brain to handle vast amount of information. Simply speaking it’s a shortcut to reduce information processing because our brains cannot process that much information we encounter every day. In our case, most of Americans have been conditioned by the media so that they think because communism/dictatorship=devil, China=communism/dictatorship so China=devil. So when they heard a bad story about Chinese government, they won’t bother to check how much truth the story holds because it’s must be true—it’s coming from China “the Devil”.

Anyone who dare to question the authenticity of such stories, therefore, must be trying to defend the bad guys. Since no one wants to defend the bad guys for no reason, these people must be paid shills for the Chinese government. This is how the American media and some of my fellow kossacks think. 

What they conveniently forget, is the fact that there are more than a dozen books that expose the evils of communism in China, the sufferings of the people during the Cultural Revolution, and the yearning for freedom of the Chinese people today. A good sampling of them is the following:
Standoff at Tiananmen by Eddie Cheng
Life and Death in Shanghai by Cheng Nien
China's Son: Growing Up in the Cultural Revolution by Da Chen
Ten Years of Madness: Oral Histories of China's Cultural Revolution by Jicai Feng
These books are far more critical of the Cultural Revolution, or today's Chinese government, than Ping Fu's book, yet none of them received the type of one-star reviews that Ping Fu received. They all received mostly five-star reviews by the readers. 

Once people see these facts, they should realize how stupid it is to accuse the critics of Ping Fu to be tools of the Chinese government. 

2, Availability-misweighing
We know that people tend to believe things that are more familiar to them, or can be better retrieved from their brain memory or more available to them. So obviously the China pictured by the media is more familiar to most Americans and therefore they tend to believe the book because it matches the China the media has pictured for them. And they never bother to collect more and unfamiliar facts about China or in that matter all unfamiliar foreign countries.

Our fellow kossacks have long recognized how unreliable the media has been when it comes to domestic American politics. The other side, the conservatives, are even less trusting of the media. But when it comes to things about China, all of a sudden the media becomes so truthful and trustworthy, their message even overrides those who actually came from China. Why? 

3, Avoid doubts tendency
Believe it or not, our brains don’t like uncertainty. If given the chance, our brains will try to avoid doubts. If you heard the same kind of story but say it happened in Canada. You would doubt the truth of this story. But it happened in China, and you don’t know much about China except from the media. And if China is already associated with devil, than your brains would take the chance to avoid doubts and believe the story.

In other words, intellectual laziness.

4, Over optimism/wishful thinking tendency
We all know this saying “what a man wishes, that also will he believe”. We all want to believe great stories (or wish great story to be true, just like we wish we could win lottery). Ping’s story is a great one: not only had she survived one of the most brutal systems but also prospered after she came to America, fulfilled her American dream. Of course everybody wants to believe it. Who doesn’t?

Ping Fu's story is too close to a Hollywood plot: A tranquil, comfortable life interrupted by a revolution, followed by great sufferings, then redemption through determination and some good luck. One could not have written a better script for a movie. A naive reader has an urge to believe that it is true, and would then willingly ignore all evidence to the contrary.

5, Authority
Ping’s book got great reviews from some famous critics, so it must be true. She was also interviewed by the media, so it must be a true story. Is it really?

Now we know what famous critics do - they never look at a book critically, not when it is about something they know very little about.

6, Social proof
We all know “monkey see monkey do”. Everybody likes Ping’s book, it must be good and true. Especially those Authorities like it. Authority compounding with Social proof sometimes could be very powerful.

It tells us how shallow ourselves really are. 

Even after we know that the story is a lie, there are still people defending and justfying it. Why? See below:

7, Incentive-caused bias
Their logic goes like this: China is devil anyway, so what’s wrong with fighting against it; we should use all tools we have, even lies. Maybe some people can understand this logic but it has nothing to do with truth and don’t forget somebody is making a fortune out of a lie. Fighting devil and making money at the same time, what a great story. Is it about money or devil? 

8, Self-serving
I am better than you guys so my opinions are better than you guys so I can’t be wrong so you are wrong. 

9, Denial
It looks very stupid if one found his/her previous statements are wrong especially when publicly stated. It’s painful to admit that you are wrong so the alternative is to keep your head in the sand. 

10, Commitment and consistency
I have made a public statement about the book, so I have to be consistent with my opinion. I will ignore all unfavorable evidence and find all favorable evidence to support my opinion/theory. 

So in summary, all these psychological tendencies work together in the same direction to mislead educated Americans to believe a lie. Two star for a great lie.

I still have confidence in my fellow Americans. We have a free press, although not a very responsible one. Our voice is still here, although not many are listening. Hopefully, people will start to think, and recognize the liar's lies. 

Let me end with the following plea. We have democracy and freedom of speech here, but not in China. Pro-democracy people in China look to the US as their inspiration and example. The Ping Fu affair has given them a very bad example. It is much more difficult to explain to my Chinese friends what good a free press does, if a free press can be bought. I hope that my persistence here, and the persistence of other Chinese Americans on Amazon and other English forums, will ultimately be able to bring the mainstream media to their senses, and start to cover this story fairly and objectively. Then I can hold up this as a great example why we need a free press, and how it can successfully expose liars.

xgz: Inconsistencies in Ping Fu's Gang Rape Story

The following post was posted by xgz on his The Daily Kos blog on February 8, 2013:

This diary is a part in a long series reviewing the book Bend, not Break: A Life in Two Worlds by Ping Fu. Please read part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, and part VI for background. 

The gang rape story is a much hyped key part of Ping Fu's Bend, not Break: A Life in Two Worlds. Although most readers who lived in China during that period would first react to this story with disbelief, it is generally considered a personal experience that someone who was not there cannot possibly disprove. Furthermore, it was such a horrific and gruesome crime, a reader would instinctively want to skip this part in the book, let alone challenging it. 

My previous exchange on this website with some of the commenters about the rape episode was not based on her book's description (because I did not have the stomach to read this part), but rather on the reports in the media. It turns out that those reports in the media were not accurate, and painted a very different picture than the actual story told in the book. 

It is a difficult decision whether to go into the rape story. On the one hand, it is true that most rape victims are reluctant to come forward. Any barrier to reporting would aggravate the problem. On the other hand, lying about rape is just as bad, if not worse, because it cheapens the suffering of the real victims, and makes it harder to help the real victim. After much deliberation, I decided that truth is more important, and I should not be desuaded by political correctness. 

It was hard to bring myself to read the actual account of the crime, and I am not going to analyze those. There are inconsistencies in the parts of the story before and after the crime that would cast serious doubt on what really happened.

During the Cultural Revolution, Ping Fu and her younger sister lived in the dorm of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA). The dorm building was close enough to the edge of the campus of NUAA, that they could walk to a canal around the old city wall of Nanjing, across the street from the campus. Here is how the episode began (page 75):

One lazy, hot summer afternoon, as I lay resting in our room, I heard the voices of several children screaming outside, "Hong is in the river! Hong is in the river!" One of them called to me, "Ping, your sister is drowning!"

This is where the first doubt arises. The river was outside the campus, across the street. (Here I removed the original discussion of whether this was a set up or not because now I realize that the original argument is not as solid as I first thought). Thanks to a netter familiar with this area of Nanjing, we know now that the river is about one kilometer away from NUAA. It was impossible for Ping Fu to have heard screams from the river if she was inside NUAA. If someone were to run from the river to NUAA dorm to get Ping, a round trip would have taken ten minutes. By then either her sister would be dead, or would have already been saved. 

The only logical explanation that neither Hong was dead nor she was saved after the time it took for Ping to get there, would be that this was a trap to lure Ping Fu out. Such an elaborate trap means that the perpetrators knew Ping Fu very well. But the problem is, Ping Fu did not identify a single person in name. She named everyone both before and after this event, but hid the names of all the perpetrators. 

After the whole ordeal of severe beating and gang rape, Ping Fu woke up in the health clinic of NUAA (page 77):

The next thing I remember, I woke up in the NUAA health clinic. A kind nurse told me that I had sustained "deep cuts, a broken tailbone, and internal injuries." It had taken more than forty stitches to close the wounds. I carry the scars to this day.

It is highly doubtful that a health clinic in NUAA in 1968 had the X-ray equipment needed to diagnose the broken tailbone (and to make sure that she did not have other serious injuries). It is also highly unlikely that someone who sustained such serious injuries and was unconscious would be treated only at the clinic. She would have been sent to a hospital. 

If one believes that she was only treated at the clinic, then one must accept the possibility that she was not seriously hurt. She may have been beaten but not raped. 

To assume that people who brought her to the clinic, and those who treated her, did not report the crime, would be quite callous. It would be effectively accusing all these people to be part of the coverup of the crime. I cannot believe that's what happened. 

In Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai, her daughter was raped by a rebel faction leader (造反派头头, these people are generally lumped together with the Red Guards in the west), and he murdered her in order to cover up the crime. In the official report, the daughter was said to have committed suicide. This leader was brought to justice more than ten years later, and received a suspended death sentence for this crime. Nien Cheng was not satisfied with this sentence, and believed that he should have been sentenced to death. 

The reason that rapists often murdered their victims during the Cultrual Revolution, was that they knew that the punishment for rape was death penalty. Everyone knew this. That's why that no one reported the rape of Ping, depite so many people knew about it, was so incredible. If this story was true, then it was not an indictment of the Cultural Revolution, but an indictment of every Chinese, those who covered up the crime, and those who still refuse to believe it today.

xgz: Ping Fu's Fantasy Childhood Life in Communist Shanghai

The following post was published by xgz on his The Daily Kos blog on February 7, 2013:

In Ping Fu's book Bend, not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, the description of her life in Shanghai before the Cultural Revolution does not seem like an average family's life in Shanghai at all. It was even better than an upper middle class American family. Her Shanghai papa and mama had a three-story house, a front yard and a back yard, all enclosed with a gate, and the house was not far from the business district, Nanjing Road. For a family of two adults and six children, their evening meals would have four appetizers  one soup, and eight main dishes. This was less than four years after a nation wide famine that killed thirty million people, in a communist society where Mao himself declared that he would only have four dishes and a soup for each meal. How could this be possible? 

Let me try to figure this one out. 

Ping Fu said that her Shanghai papa ran a factory that made threads. Reading from the description in the book, her Shanghai mama was probably a housewife. There were six children including Ping. They lived in a house described in the book as:

Our family house was peaceful rather than showy, a three-story and three-section villa connecting to a courtyard with a front gate that opened onto the main street of our neighborhood. Surrounding the complex, a stone wall decorated with an ornate iron fence shielded the serene interior from the unpredictable outside world. 

Curved, handcrafted iron and stone balconies adorned the south facade, letting in warm light on sunny days and offering a panoramic view. Standing there, you could glean something of our lives in the early 1960s: the imposing headquarters of the Soviet Friendship Society looming large amid the boutiques and businesses that lined the city's famous Nanjing Road.

This was a huge house by Chinese standard. Her Shanghai family must have been very, very wealthy before the Cultural Revolution. In fact, such a luxurious life might be too rosy a picture of bourgeoisie life under communist rule in Shanghai. Yet there is still something missing in this picture. Where were the servants? There were no mention of any servant in the Shanghai part of the book. The most likely place that servants would have appeared, the scene was like this:

While my older siblings were off at school, I would spend afternoons with Shanghai Mama in the kitchen. She said that food must appeal to all five senses: aroma, color, texture, taste, and love. I'd hang on to her legs amid the sizzle and steam and chopping sounds as she prepared the traditional dinners we enjoyed each night: four appetizers, one soup, and eight main courses.

We will address the problem with the food later. But note here that Shanghai mama cooked a huge meal everyday, without any help. And she managed to keep a three-story, three-section house clean everyday without any help. 

But in China during the 1960's, for a family who lived in such a huge house, it would be unlikely not to have any servants. This was the description of the life of the wealthy in Shanghai before the Cultural Revolution in Cheng Nien's Life and Death in Shanghai:

Not many private people in Shanghai lived as we did seventeen years after the Communist Party took over China. In this city of ten million, perhaps only a dozen or so families managed to preserve their old lifestyle, maintaining their original homes and employing a staff of servants. The Party did not decree how the people should live. In fact, in 1949, when the Communist army entered Shanghai, we were forbidden to discharge our domestic staff lest we aggravate the unemployment problem. But the political campaigns that periodically convulsed the country rendered many formerly wealthy people poor. When they became victims, they were forced to pay large fines or had their income drastically reduced. And many industrialists were relocated inland with their families when their factories were removed from Shanghai. I did not voluntarily change my way of life, not only because I had the means to maintain my standard of living, but also because the Shanghai municipal government treated me with courtesy and consideration through its United Front Organization.

You see, in communist Shanghai, if you were a capitalist, you were forced to keep your servants. It might be that for some unknown reasons Ping Fu's family really did not have any servants, despite they clear need and that they could afford them. It was more likely that simply because Ping Fu never lived there, she assumed that since it was communist China, even her aunt's family did not have servants. 

Later I will provide solid proof that she did not live in Shanghai during her childhood. But before that let me offer another absurdity in her book, the food in Shanghai. Let's go back to the text I cited earlier:

While my older siblings were off at school, I would spend afternoons with Shanghai Mama in the kitchen. She said that food must appeal to all five senses: aroma, color, texture, taste, and love. I'd hang on to her legs amid the sizzle and steam and chopping sounds as she prepared the traditional dinners we enjoyed each night: four appetizers, one soup, and eight main courses. My favorite dish was crabmeat with ginkgo nuts in mint mango sauce.

Ping Fu was born in 1958 in Nanjing. The above scene should have occurred before she started school. In Shanghai, the government requires children start first grade when they reach age of seven which would be 1965 or 1966. The scene above should have happened after she could remember things but before she started school. That puts the scene between 1961 and 1965. What happened in China during that time? A great famine in which 30 million people died of starvation during the beginning of this period. Food ration was imposed everywhere in China, including Shanghai, and continued until after Mao's death in 1976. With severe shortage of food, people were lucky to have one dish on their table. Even the number one capitalist family in all of China, the Rong family, who also lived in Shanghai and whose son Rong Yiren later became the vice president of China (in the 1990's), was only having one dish (soy braised pork) for their meal and it was considered a luxury. Yet here we have an unknown, relatively wealthy merchant family enjoying "four appetizers, one soup, and eight main courses" each night! Not only it was so soon after the greatest famine in China's history, it was supposedly under a ruthless communist rule. Would you believe this story? 

Her favorite dish was "crabmeat with ginkgo nuts in mint mango sauce". Many critics have raised questions about this. Mango sauce was never heard of in China in the 1960's. If Ping Fu's family were able to get it, they must have bought it from overseas and somehow slipped it through the tight customs control by the communist government. I have no idea how plausible that was. But it certainly sounded like an 1001 nights tale. 

Finally, the real proof that Ping Fu never lived in Shanghai. When Ping Fu described that she had never flown in an airplane before leaving for the US, she said:

As I settled into my seat aboard the aircraft, the vent blasted warm air at my forehead. It occurred to me that this was my first experience of temperature-controlled air. I had never flown in an airplane, though I had spent most of my childhood sliding down aircraft wings at an abandoned airfield and dreaming of becoming an astronaut. I had never traveled anywhere outside of China. The farthest I had been from Nanjing, the city of my birth, was Suzhou University, where I had studied journalism and literature.

There are two big clues in this paragraph that tell us where she really lived during her childhood. 

First, there was an abandoned airfield not far from her home, because she had spent "most of my childhood sliding down aircraft wings." This was not once, twice, occasionally, or for a year or two. This was "most of my childhood." If Ping Fu spent most of her childhood in Shanghai, then where was this abandoned airfield in Shanghai? Historically, there had been a total of four airports built in Shanghai. Three are still in use today: Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, Shanghai Pudong International Airport, and Shanghai Longhua Airport. These are certainly not abandoned and had not been abandoned in the past either. One old airport, Jiangwan Airport, was still in use until 1994. None of these airports was abandoned during the 1960's. 

Where was this abandoned airfield then? The answer is the Ming Palace Airport in Nanjing. Ming Palace Airport was the first civilian airport in Nanjing and was located at the center of Nanjing. It was abandoned in 1956. It was only a few blocks from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where Ping Fu's father was a professor. The time matches - it was recently abandoned and new constructions had not been built. The location matches - it was close to her home, but only if she lived in Nanjing. From this description in her book, it is clear that Ping Fu spent her childhood in Nanjing, not in Shanghai. The whole story in Shanghai was fabricated. 

The second big clue I already mentioned in a previous diary. She stated that the farthest she went before leaving for the US was Suzhou University. But if the book was correct, she spent first half of her childhood in Shanghai and second half in Nanjing. Suzhou is midway between Shanghai and Nanjing. This could not be possible. The only logical conclusion is that she was in Nanjing throughout her childhood. The Shanghai childhood was just a fantasy.

xgz: Racism against Chinese Americans on Clear Display in Ping Fu Affair

The following post was published by xgz on his The Daily Kos blog on February 5, 2013:

When Ping Fu's book, Bend, not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, went on sale with much media fanfare, almost every major media outlet reported her story. I heard it on NPR. It was then that Chinese Americans found out how Ping Fu was inventing her experience in China to profit from it. We were outraged and spoke out strongly against the book. 

The American (and Western) media, instead of examining the inconsistencies in her book and accepting that they made a big mistake, started to attack her critics as "shills" of the Chinese government. The Chinese American community were insulted first by Ping Fu's lies, then abused by the media. It is a spectacular display of the ignorance and arrogance of the mainstream American culture. The undercurrent of racism against everything Chinese that most people dared not to express openly, has finally found an outlet. 

This makes me very angry. We will not give up. We will fight this battle to the end.

To see a description of the Ping Fu affair, please read my previous diaries Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV. 

The despicable display of ignorance, prejudice, journalistic irresponsibility, and deep-rooted racism can be seen clearly in the report of the reaction in this Guardian article:

Chinese cast doubt over executive's rags to riches tale 

Author of book describing her path from cultural revolution to head of US technology firm accuses critics of smear campaign

Oh my fucking god, a "smear campaign"! First of all, I am one of the strongest critics of Ping Fu, and I am an American! And to use one side's words in the title of article clearly displays where the prejudice of the journalist is. The whole article is trying to gloss over the problems in her book, and just repeats the lines used by Ping Fu herself to defend her lies. 

And this journalist must be a shill for Ping Fu, if we judge by her standards:

Furious at the airing of China’s dirty laundry in Ping Fu’s new memoir, Chinese commenters have kicked off an online assault. The tech entrepreneur tells Katie Baker the vitriol feels like the public shame sessions of her youth.

No, she did not have any public shame sessions during her youth. She made all of them up. Now she has brought shame onto her by her own lies. 

And the display of racism in the comments is even worse. Here is just a random sample:

CharlesLiu
30 minutes ago 

You got your propaganda wrong, Katie. Most commenters are ex-pat like Fu who knew her story was Mike Daisey-esq. Also the Chinese myth buster who debunked Fu's claims is a well known academic in China. 

X
21 minutes ago 

Another Chinese Blogger aka propagandist. 

CharlesLiu
18 minutes ago 

@X What a bigoted comment. I ain't from mainland China, ain't never been citizen of the PRC a day in my life. I live in Seattle, name the place we can settle this in person if you like. #McCarthyism 

X
15 minutes ago 

Like they say in China, keep on blogg'n 

X
9 minutes ago 

I just checked the phone book, and you are not listed.  Did you mean Seattle, China.

There are numerous such attacks on us on the review page of Ping Fu's book on Amazon. They are too painful for me to read. 

My heart aches. Why aren't we treated as Americans? Why whenever there is a debate or disagreement, are we considered Chinese, not American? Why? Can any Kossacks help me understand? What is wrong with America? 

On further reflection, I may have overreacted myself. It is possible that those attacks are the works of Fu's PR team to exploit the weaknesses in us. So perhaps even the racist tones were part of the lies. I hope that is the case.

xgz: Ping Fu's Time Travel Machine

The following post was published by xgz on his The Daily Kos blog on February 4, 2013:

Ping Fu's new book, Bend, not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, stirred a huge controversy because of its conflicting and sometimes nonsensical description of her life in China. In the face of mounting criticism, she has insisted that all of the inconsistencies were the faults of the reporters and news media who used the words such as "labor camp" and "child soldier" which distorted the meaning of her book. She urged people to read her book to see that she did not lie about her life in China. 

So now I am going to read for you a few excerpts from her book and let you see for your own eyes what a liar she is.

What characterizes Fu's autobiography is the incredible out of place, out of time feeling one gets for anyone who had experienced China during the periods covered in her book. In other words, what Fu described in her book is a China that no Chinese would recognize. She transplanted stories from other places or other time periods into her story. She must have a time travel machine. 

Let us look at her college years to begin our analysis. 

She stated that towards the end of her second year in college, which would be the end of 1979, she joined a student club called "Red Maple Society" which published something that got into trouble with Deng Xiaoping himself (an incredible story already, but let's suspend our disbelief for now and see what happened). On page 251:

The government decided at the last minute to ban the gathering of the ten universities, deeming it illegal. Instead, it was announced that china's de facto leader, Deng Xiaoping, would receive the representatives for a private meeting. 

This was when things went terribly wrong.

After the unsuccessful meeting in Beijing, news went to Suzhou, and her club and herself got punished by university officials (page 252):

The Red maple society was deemed an illegal underground society responsible for publishing anti-Communist propaganda. University officials arrested and interrogated all the students who belonged to our magazine group. For weeks, they pressed us to confess our counterrevolutionary activities.

After going through all the repercussions of the this unfortunate turn of event, Fu continued on page 253:

For the rest of the semester, I endured relentless criticism by Communist Party officials and never-ending confession sessions.

What's wrong with this scene? Well, this was 1980 by now. And 1980's China was not like this at all. What Fu is describing is more like 1970 than 1980. 1980 was the year that Deng finally took control of the power in China, squeezing out the former party boss Hua Guofeng. Deng did this with the help of democratic forces in China. Although by 1979 he already started to crackdown on the democratic advocates and arrested Wei Jingsheng, he still left college campuses largely alone. And that year he rewarded the democratic forces with the first and only (partially) democratic election in China. I know because I was there. I was on the campus of Peking University in 1980, and was really excited to see people like Hu Ping and Wang Juntao (both are now dissidents living in New York) to campaign openly on campus against party endorsed candidates. At the end Hu Ping won the election in our district. (For a detailed analysis of the 1980 election in China, see B Womack 1982, "The 1980 County-Level Elections in China: Experiment in Democratic Modernization."  Asian Survey 22:3 (March), pp. 261-277.) In my view, the election of 1980 was the biggest thing that happened in China during my college years. Yet during this period Ms. Fu was having a 1970's flashback at Suzhou University. 

Then her story went from strange to bizarre. She talked about how university officials would check all female students to see whether they had their periods to make sure that they were not pregnant (page 254):

At our school, officials would confirm that all female students were menstruating each month by checking their sanitary napkins. When they discovered that some women were cheating by bringing in their friends' soiled pads, the officials began inserting their fingers into our vaginas to check for blood.

In a culture that viewed women's virginity before marriage as paramount, any official who dared to do this would immediately lose her job. In reality, the way the university officials controlled students at that time, was by not allowing marriage, sex, or even any contacts between male and female students at all. We lived in separate dorm buildings. The dorm buildings for female students always had ugly old ladies as guards. The gates were locked during the night. They did not need to check for pregnancies because they already controlled everything else. Ping Fu did not seem to have lived in China in the 1980s. 

Then there was this kidnapping that came right out of a 007 spy movie (page 255):

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 bounded my wrists together tightly. "Don't scream," a menacing male voice whispered as I was escorted into a nearby car.

There are so many things wrong with this scene it is comical. First of all, there was really no need for the police in 1982 to make secret arrests in this dramatic manner. If they wanted someone to quietly go with them, all they had to do was to show their id and say "come with me". No one would have resisted. Kidnapping would actually draw more attention. Second, the police in 1982 was not that rich. They could not afford to give their potential captives a car ride. They would have used a military style jeep. In fact, in her interview with Reuters, Fu did say it was a jeep. It is a mystery why she changed it into a car in the book. Third, the time of the year was not consistent. She took the college entrance exam in 1977. The school started in Feb of 1978. Since at that time all of Chinese universities had four year programs, she should have graduated by the spring of 1982. So it made absolutely no sense for her to think about graduation in the fall of 1982. She must have had another time travel. 

Then, after this kidnapping episode, she went home to Nanjing and declared (page 258),

"I want to leave the university, claiming a nervous breakdown."

So this was how she quit the university without graduation. And she was forced to exile to the US. But there is this one big problem. She did graduate from Suzhou University with a BA degree in Chinese Literature. I contacted University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Ping Fu got her MS degree, for her degree information, and this was their reply,

We had a student by that name graduate with an MS from UIUC May 1990 and her Advisor was Jane Liu.  She also obtained a BA in Computer Science & Economics from the University of CA, San Diego in 1988 and a BA in Literature from Suzhou University-China in 1982.  Her original application file indicated she attended the University of New Mexico from 1984 to 1986, but no degree was awarded.

She had a BA degree from Suzhou University in 1982 as indicated in her application form. Did Ping Fu the author of Bend, not Break live in a parallel universe? 

Finally, let me end with a couple of jewels in the book. First, page 3:

The farthest I had been from Nanjing, the city of my birth, was Suzhou University, where I had studied journalism and literature.

This is what happens when you tell too many lies. You cannot keep track of all the lies that you have told, and somewhere you let it slip the reality, which conflicts with everything else you say. Here Ms. Fu finally told a truth. The truth was, that she never went further than Suzhou before leaving for the US in 1984. The distance between Shanghai (where Fu was supposedly living before the Cultural Revolution) and Nanjing (her birthplace) is about 350 kilometers, but the distance between Suzhou and Nanjing is about 220 kilometers. In fact, if you take a train from Nanjing to Shanghai, there is a stop in between for Suzhou. This sentence on page 3 may have let the truth slip through the web of lies weaved by Fu. It tells us that the story in Shanghai before the Cultural Revolution may have been a tale. She lived in Nanjing all along. 

The second little jewel is also on page 3:

I landed in San Francisco fourteen hours later, jet-lagged and emotionally drained.

That was a direct, nonstop flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, on Jan 14, 1984, the date she arrived in the US. And on the flight there were American flight attendants, who did not speak Chinese. United Airlines was the only US airline that has direct nonstop flights from Shanghai to San Francisco, when it was started in 1999. Did Ping Fu travel forward in time to catch the United flight? 

This book should be categorized as a science fiction.

xgz: Bend, Not Break: A Lie in Two Worlds (Part III)

The following post was published by xgz on The Daily Kos on February 5, 2013:

Mitt Romney was the champion of flip-flopping in 2012. But he only managed to do that over the course of a whole year, and he can claim that he merely changed his mind about what he would do if he were elected president, and that one is never sure about the future... 

Ms Ping Fu is no doubt the champion of flip-flopping in 2013. What is amazing is that she changed her mind about what happened in the past. Will she claim that one is also never sure about the past? 

Below is a compilation of Fu's own words against herself. 

Please also read part I and part II of this series. 

1. Ping Fu: Story of an Entrepreneur at 10:40

Fast forward 10 years, Cultural Revolution ended the year I was supposed to graduate from high school. I actually never went to school during the 10 years. I went to countryside planting rice fields.

Ping Fu: Clarifying the Facts in Bend, Not Break

After 1972, school resumed (p. 128). We had few formal classes at my school at the edge of Nanjing in an industrial area. I studied nonstop (pp. 229-231) and was known by my family as "the girl who never turns off her lights." (p. 231).

2. Tavis Smiley:  Entrepreneur Ping Fu at 7:22

First two months were just chaos, with those bitter meals, struggle sessions, those screaming at nobody. And I think it was about a year later, I was assigned to work in a factory. Some of the older kids gets to send to the countryside. But I was too young to do that. So I went to the factory to build radios and speedometers.

Ping Fu: Clarifying the Facts in Bend, Not Break

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.

3. Ping Fu: Story of an Entrepreneur

Nowadays we know that during those times when I was in college, thirty million babies were killed. When I did the research, such a fact was not quite known by the press. When my research came out, the government and also lots of newspapers had not reported it. So they reported it. And that's the first time China admitted such a wide spread killings that existed. So the news immediately being covered by the international press, and steps by UN impose sanctions on China for human rights violation.

Ping Fu: Clarifying the Facts in Bend, Not Break

I remember reading an editorial in a newspaper in 1982 that called for gender equality. It was not a news article and not written by me, and I didn't know it had anything to do with my research (pp. 253-255). When writing the book, I did not name the paper, since I wasn't certain. However, I think that is where I read the editorial because it was the most popular and official newspaper. People who have not read my book made assumptions that I submitted the research to the newspaper, or I published the thesis, but that was not how I described it in the book.

4. Ping Fu: "Bend not Break", Authors at Google at 10:44

I was lucky that Deng Xiaoping had asked, "What happened to the reporter?" And they said, "Well we throw her in jail." And he said, "Why? This is not Cultural Revolution any more." But he didn't give any instructions so nobody knew what to do with me. And I was let out, and then two weeks later I was given a passport and told to leave the country.

Jenna Goudreau: 'Bend, Not Break' Author Ping Fu Responds To Backlash

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.”