Broken Fact: Fu Ping's Kidnapping at Albuquerque

The Original Story:
On Pages 4-9 of Bend, Not Break, Fu Ping told another bizarre story of her life, that she was kidnapped and wrongfully imprisoned by someone who sought her out at the Albuquerque airport upon her initial arrival:

When I got to Albuquerque, I found myself stranded once again. My father had given me the name of Mr. Sheng, a former student of his who was studying at the University of New Mexico and had helped my family to get me accepted there. I called him collect several times, but the phone rang endlessly... 

A car pulled up in front of me sometime later, When I looked up with hazy eyes, I saw a Chinese man sitting in the driver's seat. He rolled down the window slowly...

The man, who turned out to be "a Vietnamese refugee of Chinese descent," took her instead to his own apartment and locked her inside with two young boys of his with little to no food. It was only on the third day they managed to have their cries of help heard and police arrived. Citing fear and confusion, Fu Ping chose not to cooperate with the police:

The police tried to get me to press kidnapping charges against the Vietnamese man. I refused. I simply begged them to set me free. Eventually they gave up and put a call into UNM on my behalf. They got directions for where on campus to take me: the International Student Center. 

I arrived at the University of New Mexico in a squad car.

The Questioning:
On February 20, 2013, Didi Kirsten Tatlow wrote on International Herald Tribune:

At the beginning of her memoir, Ms. Fu writes of being kidnapped by a Vietnamese-American on arrival in the U.S. state of New Mexico and locked in his apartment to care for his very young children, whose mother had left, in a bizarre incident. A spokeswoman at the Albuquerque Police Department’s Records Office, where the alleged kidnapping took place, said she could not locate such an incident in their records. Asked about it, Ms. Fu repeated that she did not press charges as, fresh from China, she was terrified of all police, “So I don’t know how they keep records, if there is no criminal charges or record.” 

The Debunking:
Cindy Hao, who was also credited for the report by Didi Kirsten Tatlow above, actually did the investigation with the Albuquerque Police Department. She had described Fu Ping's story to the police who searched their database for a police report but found none. Cindy Hao asked if there would be a police report for such incident if the victim did not press charges, the police answered, "Absolutely."

Other people have also inquired and received same responses from the police office.

Kidnapping, imprisonment, and endangerment of the lives of not only Fu Ping but 2 young children is an extremely serous crime. It is inconceivable that the police would not pursue the criminal just because one of the victims refused to press charges. And even so, there would have been a police report for the rescuing and investigative effort, as they said, "absolutely."

Besides this obvious problem, there are also several tell-tales that this whole story was made up:

The Vietnam man claimed that his wife just walked out of him so he needed someone to look after his children. So, what was he doing at the airport picking up a random stranger? Was he so nice to have just given his estranged wife a ride there? If he cared about his children, would he be locking them up with a victim of his with no food for days?

Fu Ping described the place as "government-subsidized housing for refugees," which tends to be condense and crowded. It's hard to believe that they had to yell from a window for three days before someone heard them.

Then, in her earlier autobiography Drifting Bottle, she described a normal arrival at Albuquerque with no drama whatsoever. In fact, on the third day in that book, she was already dining with her local contact Kaili (凯利) -- very likely the "Mr. Sheng" -- and complaining that Kaili failed to contact her earlier (Pages 37-38). She would not be making the complain if she had been locked up for those three days.

One of the main themes of Drifting Bottle is her suffering and struggle in the US as a foreign student. While it could be justifiable that that earlier book did not contain her childhood and college suffering in China for political reasons, the same could not apply for not including the kidnapping story that happened on her first day in America, if it indeed happened.

Document: Albuquerque Police Department's Response to Fu Ping Kidnapping Incident

In her book and interviews, Fu Ping had told a story how she was kidnapped for 3 days upon her arrival to Albuquerque, New Mexico, until police rescued her. Several people have inquired the police department there to verify her story. The following is one response received by Albert Wang:

From: Torres, David L.
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:21 AM
To: alberthuaienwang@hotmail.com
Cc: Chavez, Reynaldo L. ; Bailey, Amy
Subject: FW: FOIA Request for records of Ms. Ping Fu's alleged kidnapping in Albuquerque, New Mexico 

Mr. Wang,
This email will acknowledge completion of your public records request dated March 6th, 2013.  

APD Records does not have any incident of a kidnapping for the individual referred to on your request. 

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments 

Office of the APD Records Custodian
Reynaldo Chavez
Records Custodian/Supervisor
(505) 768-2007
chavezr@cabq.gov

IHT: True of False? The Tussle over Ping Fu's Memoir

On February 20, 2013, International Herald Tribune published the following article written by Didi Kirsten Tatlow. It's one of the two articles by the author on the subject on the same day.

According to this article, Fu Ping disclosed for the first time that she had an earlier marriage which was never mentioned in either Bend, not Break or her earlier memoir Drifting Bottle. She also blamed her coauthor Meimei Fox for some of the "errors" in her memoir.

Cindy Hao, who was credited as a contributor to this article, also contacted the Albuquerque Police Department's Records Office and got an affirmative answer that there had been no records on Fu Ping's alleged kidnapping incident.

Did Ping Fu, a prominent Chinese-American businesswoman and author of a recent memoir, “Bend, not Break,” make up her horrible experiences during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in order to gain United States citizenship? Did they help her become an American by claiming political asylum? 

That’s what her critics, many of them fellow Chinese-Americans, say. It’s an accusation that can stick. As a recent New York Times investigation showed, claiming persecution has spawned an immigration industry involving lawyers prepping clients to make false asylum claims. 

As I write in my Letter from China this week, Ms. Fu is being accused of making up a lot of things in her memoir. She’s also a successful entrepreneur: the U.S. government honored Ms. Fu, the founder of the software company Geomagic (in the process of being sold to 3D Systems), with a “2012 Outstanding American by Choice” award. 

Ms. Fu is on the board of the White House’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and is a member of the National Council on Women in Technology, according to the Web site of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

Ms. Fu, who says in her memoir she was “quietly deported” to the U.S. in 1984 for writing about female infanticide while still a college student, denies the accusations. But until now she hadn’t explained in public how she became an American. 

In an interview with the International Herald Tribune, she said, apparently for the first time, the reason she kept quiet was she was trying to protect her first husband, an American, whom she does not mention in her memoir. The marriage took place while she was living in California, she said. 

“I had a first marriage and that’s how I got my green card,” she said by telephone. She married on Sept. 1, 1986 and divorced three years later. Until now she had kept silent because of a “smear” campaign against her online, mostly by fellow Chinese who accuse her of lying, which extended to real-life harassment, she said: “They smear my name, they try to get my daughter’s name on the Internet, they sent people to Shanghai to surround my family and to Nanjing to harass my neighbors.” She said the accusers, who are “angry” for reasons she doesn’t really understand, contacted U.S. immigration authorities to challenge her award and her citizenship, as well as shareholders of 3D Systems to warn them she was a “liar,” and not to buy Geomagic. Her second husband, Herbert Edelsbrunner, whom she has since divorced, received many “hate e-mails,” she said. “I just don’t want to hurt innocent people.” 

If a first, unpublicized marriage might lay to rest one contentious issue, there are others. Some were the result of exaggeration or unclear communication with her co-author, MeiMei Fox of Los Angeles, she said. 

In the interview, she volunteered an example of an error: a widely criticized account of the ‘‘period police,’’ the authorities who checked a woman’s menstrual cycle to ensure she wasn’t pregnant in the early days of the one-child policy. To stop women substituting others’ sanitary pads for inspection, they were sometimes required to use their own finger to show blood. Through a misunderstanding with Ms. Fox, Ms. Fu said this was portrayed as the use of other people’s fingers — an invasion of the woman’s body. 

Ms. Fox “wrote it wrong,’’ she said. ‘‘I corrected it three times but it didn’t get corrected.’’ Women used their own finger to show blood, she said, but the mistake went into print anyway.
In general, Ms. Fox may have ‘‘just made some searches on the Internet that maybe weren’t correct,’’ Ms. Fu said. 

Chiefly the errors involved use of the words ‘‘all, never, any,’’ that generalized unacceptably, Ms. Fu said. And, ‘‘She doesn’t know China’s geography,’’ she said. 

At the beginning of her memoir, Ms. Fu writes of being kidnapped by a Vietnamese-American on arrival in the U.S. state of New Mexico and locked in his apartment to care for his very young children, whose mother had left, in a bizarre incident. A spokeswoman at the Albuquerque Police Department’s Records Office, where the alleged kidnapping took place, said she could not locate such an incident in their records. Asked about it, Ms. Fu repeated that she did not press charges as, fresh from China, she was terrified of all police, “So I don’t know how they keep records, if there is no criminal charges or record.” 

And in an e-mail to me, she admitted she made mistakes about a magazine she said she helped edit, called Wugou, or “No Hook,” produced in 1979 by students at her college, then called the Jiangsu Teacher’s College (later it changed its name to Suzhou University, she said.) It was not that magazine but another one, This Generation, that was taken to a meeting in Beijing of student magazine writers from around the country, she wrote in the e-mail. “A good case that shows everyone’s memory can be wrong,” she wrote. 

But bigger questions about the scale of the online vitriol from parts of the Chinese and Chinese-American community remain. “I really haven’t known China for 20-something years, and it didn’t occur to me that what I wrote would generate so much anger,” she said. In the last years, “as China got stronger, nationalistic views got stronger,” she said, making a “civil conversation” about disagreements apparently harder. 

Additional reporting by Cindy Hao in Seattle.

Fang Zhouzi: Fu Ping's "American Legend"

The following blog was published by Fang Zhouzi on his blog on February 17, 2013. While most of the discussions on Fu Ping's story has been centered on her life in China, this post focuses on her experience in the USA and summarized many questionable aspects, including her flight to US and her bizarre incident of being kidnapped upon arrival.

　　傅苹回忆录不仅讲了她在中国文革期间和改革开放初期的人生传奇，也讲了她在美国的人生传奇，但是后者和前者一样，都是离奇得经不起推敲，是一个事无巨细都要撒谎的习惯性说谎者的信口开河。 

　　我们先来看看她刚到美国的情形。其回忆录一开头就说，1984年1月14日，她从上海飞往旧金山，飞了14个小时（2005年她接受《公司》采访说是12个小时），也就是说，她坐的是上海飞往旧金山的直达航班。飞机上是金发碧眼的美国人当空姐，她因为只会说3个英语单词，连吃喝都不敢要，只靠打手势要了一叠餐巾纸来写东西。也就是说，她坐的是美国航空公司的航班（《公司》采访更明确说是坐的美国联合航空公司的班机）。 

　　但是在80年代美国航空公司没有中国到美国的直飞航班，需要在东京转机。第一个由美国航空公司运营的中美直达航班是1996年5月1日西北航空从北京到底特律的航班，第一个上海到旧金山的美国航空公司直达航班则迟至2000年4月才由联合航空公司开通。（http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_route_authority_between_the_United_States_and_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China ） 

　　所以傅苹应该和当时的留学生一样，坐的是国航的直达航班。国航是中国人当空姐，不存在语言交流的障碍。她为了捏造其不懂英语的窘迫，给改成了美国航空公司的航班。 

　　傅苹接着说，她抵达旧金山后，去柜台购买飞往目的地Albuquerque的机票（她要去那里的新墨西哥大学上学）。她身上带着一张80美元的旅行支票，那是她在上海查到的从旧金山到Albuquerque的票价。但是柜台工作人员不卖给她票，经过一个懂汉语的工作人员的翻译，她才知道票价涨了5美元，而她身上没有带多余的钱。这时排在她身后的一个陌生美国人替她交了5美元让她买票，也让她首次感受到美国人民的温暖。 

　　这个讨好美国人的小故事漏洞百出。 

　　第一，她既然能够在上海查到去Albuquerque的票价，为什么不直接买联票，而要在转机时再补买？那样票价更贵，而且冒着买不到票的风险，完全不合情理。 

　　第二，美国机票票价的确是浮动的，买得越晚越贵，如果是当天现买最贵，而且1984年1月14日是星期六，票价比平时更贵。按我在90年代初的经验，像她这样一张机票（从旧金山到Albuquerque要飞两个半小时），在星期六现买的话要花几百美元，1984年的情况不会差别太大（80年代出国的老留学生确认了这一点），怎么可能85美元就搞定了呢？而且美国票价和中国票价不一样，一般不会是整数，她怎么会在上海打听到票价刚好是80美元？即使编个79美元也更合理。 

　　第三，她为什么带的是旅行支票？旅行支票在当时的中国极为罕见，而且旅行支票是为了避免携带大宗现金才会去换的（银行通常也有一个最低金额要求，比如至少换200美元），比现金安全（需要签名，可以挂失），但不方便使用。她只有80美元，完全可以像其他留学生那样带现金，为什么特地去换成旅行支票？《公司》的采访说，她被中国政府驱逐出境，政府官员给了她一张去旧金山的机票和80美元的旅行支票让她去Albuquerque留学——如果旅行支票是政府送给她的，还说得过去，但是她现在不好意思再胡说是政府把她驱逐出境的，而之前旅行支票的说法却延用下来，显得莫名其妙。 

　　第四，一个人出国，怎么可能只带正好的票钱，却不带任何零花钱？难道她或她的家人不会考虑到她途中可能要花钱吃饭、打电话、乘坐公共交通？当时的留学生虽然穷，美元兑换也控制得很严，但是最惨的也会身上带几十美元的零花钱。当时出国留学可以在银行以极低的官方汇率兑换几十美元的零花钱，还有黑市可兑换。像她这样身上除了票钱一分钱不带从而要靠陌生人救济的，闻所未闻，也不合生活常识。她又不是孤儿，全家人都到上海给她送行，临行前吃大餐（有照片为证），凄凄惨惨送到机场，她的姨妈还塞给她一盒鸭肉让她在飞机上吃，家里又有钱，怎么就不给她零花钱呢？如果像《公司》报道说的那样，她是被塞进飞机驱逐出境的，政府官员没给她零花钱，那还说得过去。但是她现在不敢再那么说了，这个谎就圆不了了。 

　　傅苹接着说，她抵达Albuquerque后，在机场给盛先生打对方付费电话，但是盛先生没有接电话。盛先生是傅苹父亲的学生，是他安排傅苹到新墨西哥大学留学的。后来傅苹知道当时盛先生已毕业，外出旅游了。 

　　当时在美国打对方付费电话要这么打：拿起公共电话拨0，这时会有接线员问你要干什么，你说要打对方付费电话，告诉接线员对方号码、姓名和自己的姓名，再由接线员拨通对方电话。傅苹自称只会三个单词“Hello, Thank you, Help”，而且也听不懂英语，怎么跟接线员交谈？难道她是用汉语拨的电话，而且碰巧碰上了一个会讲汉语的接线员？如果是这样的巧合，岂不更该在书里大书特书？ 

　　傅苹接着说，她拿了一大箱行李坐在机场外面不知所措，这时来了一辆车，一个越南华人用口音很重的汉语问她是否需要帮忙，她说要去新墨西哥大学，越南华人就提出送她过去。途中越南华人说要在家门口停一下看看自己的孩子，让傅苹进去花一分钟跟孩子们打声招呼。傅苹一点都不怀疑地下车跟他进门。一进门，越南华人给她一盒饼干，结结巴巴地说：“我老婆离开我了。我要去上班，你帮我照看小孩几个小时。”然后他冲到屋外，用挂锁反锁住门跑了。屋里有两个三、四岁的男孩和一个女婴，一起对着傅苹叫“妈妈”。这是一座美国政府给难民住的补贴公寓，里面没有电话，窗户很高而且有铁栏杆，从里面爬不出去，让傅苹想起中国的监狱。孩子他爸一直没有再出现。第二天，他们吃完了饼干，只在空空的屋内找到一盒通心粉和奶酪，吃了以后就开始饿肚子了。于是傅苹和孩子们对着窗户大喊“Help!”没人听到。第二天继续喊，还没人听到。第三天再喊，有邻居听到了报警，警察把他们带到市中心的警察局，警察想让傅苹起诉那个越南华人绑架罪，傅苹不愿意，警察就把她送去了新墨西哥大学。傅苹人生的最后一场苦难就此结束，从此过上了好日子。 

　　这个故事的漏洞更是多得像筛子了： 

　　第一，越南华人老婆跑了，上班前就去机场绑架一个陌生女人来给小孩当保姆，他可真有创意，真放心啊，就不怕陌生人拿小孩出气？如果这个越南华人不顾自己小孩死活，又何必去绑架一个保姆？ 

　　第二，越南华人走前留了一盒饼干，可见还考虑到吃饭问题，不想把他们饿死。但是一盒饼干和一盒通心粉也不够四个人吃一顿啊（就算他没料到会一去不回），他真不想饿死自己的小孩，总该多留点食物吧。也许有人会说，他们是不是穷得揭不开锅啊？实际上，美国穷人什么都缺，就不会缺吃的，因为政府会给穷人食物券，尤其是家有小孩的，食物券多得怎么吃也吃不完的。可见编这个故事的人根本就不了解美国穷人的生活，是按中国穷人思路来编的。 

　　第三，哪有三、四岁的小孩见了陌生女人就叫“妈妈”的？ 

　　第四，美国住宅的窗户通常不会有防盗栏杆，即使个别有防盗栏杆的，也很容易从里面打开，这是为了火灾时逃生的需要。像那种监狱式的铁栏杆窗口虽然在中国住宅很常见，在美国住宅是不可能有的，在政府的补贴公寓更不可能有，因为那是违反消防条例的。这又是按中国的思路来编。 

　　第五，四个人一起对着窗户高喊“救命”，连续喊了三天才有邻居听到，这政府的补贴公寓的隔音效果也太好了吧？实际上美国房子的隔音都是非常差的。 

　　第六、越南华人说要送傅苹去学校，她那一大箱行李应该被带上车了。傅苹跟着越南华人进屋时，行李应该还留在车上，因为越南华人只说进去一分钟打声招呼，如果拿行李就会让傅苹起疑。傅苹一进屋，越南华人就反锁门开车跑了。所以我们可以肯定傅苹的行李一直在越南华人的车上。这个越南华人后来消失了，故事讲完时都没有再出现，那么傅苹后来是怎么拿回她的行李的？编故事的时候没有想到这个漏洞吧？ 

　　第七，这个越南华人绑架和虐待儿童的罪行很明显，警方不需要傅苹的配合也可以通缉、起诉他。如果去当地调查应该可以找到诉讼记录，即使因为抓不到人而没有进入诉讼程序，那么也应该有当时出警、审讯傅苹的记录。不过我敢肯定是找不到任何记录的，因为本来就是胡编的一个故事。 

　　如果说傅苹的中国传奇需要有一定的中国历史、中国社会知识才能看穿，美国人受骗上当不足为奇的话，那么傅苹的美国传奇却是根据美国生活常识就可以看穿的，却也把美国读者骗得团团转，好评如潮，这一怪现象，的确够“传奇”的。

Fu Ping's Interview at Google Program

On January 7, 2013, Fu Ping attended the "Authors at Google" program hosted by Chade-meng Tan. In this interview, she and the host retold her life's story to some extend. Most notably, in this interview, Fu Ping described

1. How Deng Xiaoping personally intervened her case when she was "thrown in jail" after her research of female infanticide was made public.
2. How she never saw fractions before while attending a calculus class as a computer science graduate student. [She would have taken match exam for college entrance in China even if she somehow skipped GRE to get into the graduate school here.]

Also of interest is that, in this version, the only three English words she knew when she came to America were "hello", "help", and "thank you".

Below is a partial transcript of her interview. You can view the entire interview on Chade-meng Tan's blog here.

Tan: Well, my friends, thanks for being here. We are honored today to host somebody who I look up to: Ping Fu. Ping Fu is a 3D pioneer and a remarkably successful entrepreneur  As co-founder and CEO of Geomagic, she was named as Inc. magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005. Before co-founding Geomagic, she managed a team that created the NCSA Mosaic which later became the Netscape browser and which of course gave us the Internet boom. So, Ping was there, right at the beginning, of the Internet boom. With a name like "Ping", I thought it would be involved with the Internet. Sorry, engineer joke for those on the Youtube. Ping was also named an Outstanding American by Choice and she advises the White House on innovation and entrepreneurship  But more than her success and her talents, what I most admire about Ping is how she deals with adversity after adversity in her life with amazing resilience and more importantly with kindness and compassion. Her new book, her latest book  is her autobiography, Bend, Not Break, available in Google Play and all other major bookstores. In the next hour, Ping and I will talk about the exciting roles of 3D technology and Ping's fascinating life story. And with that, let's welcome Ping Fu.
Tan: So, let me begin with a question. You have lived a fascinating life. If you would boil down your life story to a few sentences, how would you describe it?
Fu: My life is truly an American dream story. I would say that I have lived three lives (for the price of one). I lived in China during Cultural Revolution and then been exiled. I arrived at United States fresh off the boat, poor immigrant try to look for a new life. And I did go through all the new immigration story and later started a business and become an entrepreneur. That's why I said, there was three chapter of my life. But really it shows the human spirits of the adaptability to change and the power of resilience.
Tan: You are very modest. You describe your life as very normal but your life is extraordinary. And I will give you a sense of how extraordinary it is: when I read your book, the first few chapters made me wanting to cry. Your early life to me is horrendous. You were taken away from your parents at age of 8, and you had to fend for yourself and your baby sister, Hong, at the time, and you were gang-raped at 10. You were hungry, you were beaten, endured abuse for years. And then as an adult, you were put in prison for documenting female infanticide, and then exiled from your own country. And then, as if that is not bad enough, when you arrived at the United States, your first experience in the US was getting kidnapped. What I want to know is this. So, first I would like to invite you to tell us the audience your early life experience. More importantly, I want to know how you manage to preserve your goodness, your kindness, and your compassion despite such a horrible experience.
Fu: Thank you Meng. That is a very mindful question. So let me first bring you back to 1966. That was at the dawn of China's infamous Cultural Revolution. Mao decided to turn the country upside down so all schools were closed. I was 8 years old. I was raised by my aunt and uncle who I thought were my biological parents. I had 5 older siblings and I was the youngest one in the family. So, one day I heard noise in our courtyard. I already knew the country kind of turned upside down so I thought they came for my mother who was my aunt. But they came for me. That was the day the Red Guard came to my house and told me that my mother was not my mother. And I was screaming and crying and said, no no no. I tell my mother, you are lying. I am your child. Just weeks ago you told me I was your favorite. I wasn't even given a chance to give her a hug. I was ripped away from the only family I knew and put on a train from Shanghai South station to Nanjing which is where my biological parents lived. I arrived just a little bit too late. When I arrived in Nanjing, all I saw was big dusts down the street and thousands of people, chaos, you can smell blood. My biological parents were put on a truck being taken away, sent far far away in exile. My mother, at the back of the truck, screamed out my name, "Ping, please take care of your sister." A little bit later of that day I was putting into a dormitory, led to a second floor to a room. There I found my little sister, 4 years old. The room was dusty, full of garbage. It did not even have a bath. The only shining place was this concrete floor where she kicked her legs and polished that place. She was crying probably for hours. Her eyes were red shot. I thought she was going to go blind. That was my first day. I lost the parents who raised me. I lost the parents who born me. And I became surrogate mother to my little sister. Then, little did I know Cultural Revolution would last for 10 years. And I was in that ghetto, one room without washbasin, for the next 10 years. I gone through a lot of atrocities you will see in the book. When I was 10 years old, my sister was thrown into a water canal outside of the wall. I jumped in and tried to save her. I did save her but didn't spare myself. I was gang-raped by a group of teenagers, broken, cut up with a knife. I still had 40 stitches on my body. Almost died. But the physical injury was not the most hurtful thing. What was most hurtful was the emotional abuse that followed. At 10, I really did not understand anything. I just thought I was beaten badly. The rumor went around and I had a nickname "broken shoes," which means that you are so worn out nobody would want you. So, at 10 I was a ruined woman. I had no adults to turn to, no psychologists to talk to, no one to help me. Many times I thought about dying. I thought this life is not worth living. But I had this little sister that I have to take care of. I couldn't just die. I have responsibilities. I think, if I didn't have her, I would have treated my life much lighter.
Fu: So, let me fast-forward to end of Cultural Revolution, that was literally 12 years later. China reopened universities in 1977. I studied to try to pass the national exam to get into a college. I did pass and I did go into a college. I was known the girl whose lights are never turned off. My life turned around. China started to change. When I was in college, I studied Chinese literature. I actually wanted to be an astronaut but I didn't have a choice. During the last semester before I graduated, I thought I was going to go to a graduate school so I wanted to do a thesis. China was imposing the one-child policy. I heard there were wide-spread killing of girls in the countryside. So I decided to choose that as a topic. That research being aired in some of Chinese newspapers where Chinese government was calling to stop the killing. But that was the first documentation from China that admitted wide-spread killing was happening. That news being picked up by international newspaper and UN posed sanctions for human rights violation. So this was embarrassment for the new government. At the time, Deng Xiaoping has already taken over China. Cultural Revolution was over. So this was embarrassment for the new government and I got into trouble and was thrown in jail. But it was only 3 days. I was lucky that Deng Xiaoping has asked what happened to the reporter. They said, "Well, we threw her in jail." And he said, "Why? This is not Cultural Revolution any more." But he didn't give any other instructions so nobody knew what to do with me. I was let out. Two weeks later, I was given a passport and told to leave the country and never to come back again. Not to apply for political asylum because my parents and sister were in China. I applied many universities in many countries and I ended up in the United States.
Fu: So your question is how did I live a life like that and remain to be, to see good, to be kind, the preservation of goodness. So when I was little, my uncle, who I thought was my father, had taught me many of those human principles. He told me that you don't want to treat other people the way you don't want to be treated. He also told me that, if you are straight, you are not worried about that your shadow is not. Another thing he had me memorized is what's called three friends of winter. Bamboo is one of it, which is what I write in my book. He told me that, "Ping, you need to be bamboo, bending with the prevailing wind but never breaking." When I was going through Cultural Revolution, I know that, if I don't focus on goodness, then I couldn't live my day. So even in the darkest time, there are human kindness from different places. I would find food left out of my door. Even though people don't dare to be associated with us, people secretly tried to help us. There will be beauty always in ugliness if you want to seek for it. I also found that being good help me to survive. Because if you are good to others, it makes it very hard for others to be cruel to you. So I just continued to focus on that.
Tan: Thank you. So you came to America and survived a kidnapping. I remember reading that you came only knowing 3 words of English, which is "hello", "help", and "thank you".
Fu: [nodding] Very useful 3 words.
Tan: I would add "where is the toilet" [laugh] You came basically crippled in language. Then you went to graduate school and you switched over to computer science. What you say is because you realized mistakenly at the time or you were told that computer science is a different language. You think since I am crippled in English, with a new language I will be in a fair playing field. For those of you who are wondering how Chinese immigrants are such engineers... [pointing to his head]
Fu: [laugh] That's the reason.
Tan: What's even more fascinating is that, when you went to class for a master in computer science and you went to a class not knowing basic mathematic concepts like fractions. You wrote that you saw teacher writing on the blackbord with numbers and a line between them and you are like, what's that? How is like to be in that situation?
Fu: That's a very good question. Like Meng said, I came here and thought I was going to study comparative literature. Yet my English was too poor. I can't study science because I didn't go through K to 12 educations. I asked around. Somebody said, oh ya, there is a new field called computer science and I said, "What's that?" They said, it's a man-made language and you learn that to make stuff. I thought, oh great. I am good with language and I know how to make stuff. That's how I got into computer science. Because I didn't go to formal education or studying mathematics in classroom, when I went to study computer science, the first class I took was calculus. I was okay with new concepts when the professor was teaching. If it's new I can follow. But when he put fraction on the blackboard, I just never seen anything like that. When I asked the professor, he said go back to high school. I took it very literally. I went to get high school math and I couldn't find it. I went to middle school class and couldn't find it. I found it on second grade's math books. So I bought, actually I borrowed, the entire math textbook from first grade to high school. I studied that at night and studied calculus during the day... First semester I almost failed the math class, but by the second math class -- I think was multi-variable calculus, the professor thought I was the sister of an Olympic math champion. That's how I arrived.

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

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

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

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

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