Broken Fact: Fu Ping's Family Tie with Dr. Sun Yat-sen

As an autobiography, Bend, Not Break is remarkably sketchy on Fu Ping's family background. There are no names to be found, either for her two sets of parents or her siblings and relatives, except for her younger sister Fu Hong. But nevertheless, the only significant mention of her ancestry was found to contain a lie.

The Original Story
Near the end of the book, almost in casual passing, Fu Ping stated on Page 261:

As for Nanjing Father, he had been born into a political family. My great-grandfather had been killed during the uprising led by Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China. Dr. Sun had raised my grandfather and grand-uncle as his own sons. 

She goes on to explain that her grandfather and his family fled to Taiwan around 1949 but her father managed to run away and stayed in mainland.

The Changed Story
Tania Branigan and Ed Pilkington of The Guardian were the first to notice this little passage and consulted an expert on Sun Yat-sen. They reported:

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. 

So Fu Ping quickly changed her story from "Dr Sun raised my grandfather and grand-uncle as his own sons" to "Sun was attentive towards them" while citing her mother as the source.

The Debunking
Although Fu Ping did not mention any names in her book or to The Guardian, she appears to have disclosed them in comments on John Kennedy's blog. If the comment is to be believed, her great grandfather is Fu Cixian (傅慈祥) who indeed died in an uprising in 1900. It is also true that Fu Cixian had two sons, Fu Guangpei (傅光培) and Fu Guangzhi (傅光植). Fu Ping claimed that Fu Guangzhi is her grandfather.

Fang Zhouzi has discovered an old article written by Fu Guangpei in memory of Fu Cixian, in which Fu Guangpei remembers when he met Sun Yat-sen for the first time in 1912, 11 years after the death of Fu Cixian. Sun did not know him but asked for his age and was generally nice to him as an elder. Fu Guangzhi was not mentioned in that article. It is likely that Fu Guangzhi, Fu Ping's grandfather, had never met Sun Yet-sen in person:

一九一二年四月,孙中山先生交卸临时大总统职后,莅临首义之区视察,那时我才十六岁。先父同学刘道仁引我去见孙先生,我问刘怎样称呼? 刘叫我称大总统。我向孙先生鞠躬称大总统。刘向孙先生介绍,这是傅慈祥的儿子。孙先生抚摸着我的头亲切地说: "不要叫我什么总统,叫孙伯伯好了。孙先生问了我的年齡后,嘱我好好读书,继承父志。

Since this is about all Fu Guangpei had to say on his relation with Sun Yet-sen, it is impossible to conclude that the latter had been "attentive towards" the brothers at all, not to mention raising them as his own sons.

Meanwhile, Fu Cixian's widow did receive some financial help, but it was from his former classmate, not Sun Yet-sen:

到癸卯(一九〇三年)那年,我父同学盟友刘道仁到潜江县来找我们,说我们是学生家属已经大赦了。其时我的曾祖母和我的哥哥、姐姐都在逃难中死了,我的母亲带着我和弟弟光植,什么也没有… 刘道仁和吴禄贞给我们母子凑了五百块钱,才得以生活下去。

By the way, according to other documents discovered by Cindy Hao, Fu Guangzhi had two sons by the names of Fu Lin (傅林) and Fu Li (傅里), respectively. On the other hand, the name of Fu Ping's father is Fu Daoli (傅道里). It's not clear whether Fu Daoli was a variation of the name Fu Li.

Fu Daoli was born in 1926 and passed away in February, 2007. Fu Ping's mother lives with Fu Ping to this day. Maybe Fu Ping could ask her to clarify a little more on Sun Yet-sen's attentiveness to her grandfather?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did they find?

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

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

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

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

Wu Liangfu: A Comprehensive Review of Bend, not Break

The following book review was published by Wu Liangfu on Amazon's reader forum on March 15, 2013:

My Review of Ping Fu's Bend, Not Break

Liangfu Wu, Downers Grove, IL USA 

I am writing this article for the benefit of American readers who may have limited knowledge of China. I believe that many Chinese readers did not fully understand the background either when making statements concerning the truthfulness of Ms. Ping Fu's memoir, Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds.  

My overall impression of the book itself is positive. Ms. Fu did tell some interesting stories; reading them is enjoyable. However, her style of the jumping back and forth between time periods may appear artificial, lacking connections and logic for the quantum leaps in time continuum. 

Whether readers believe her stories is another matter. My goal is to provide some background information with an objective analysis to help readers form their own opinion. Some of the discrepancies seem minor. However, they are the challenges Ms. Fu's book faces. If a reader reads my article and still chooses to continue believing Ms. Fu, it is his or her personal choice. Perhaps, it is more important that the reader remains honest to herself/himself. 

Due to the length, this article is divided into several parts and posted separately. Thank you for your patience, objectivity and critical thinking in reading my article. 

I did my graduate work in the United States, majoring in Public Administration, a subfield of Political Science. I have done extensive research in contemporary Chinese politics. In 2010, I published a book titled Astonishing Internal Friction (惊世内耗). Because my book touches upon some sensitive issues in China, I could not have it published in China. Finally, it was published in Hong Kong. My family was against this publication, their concern being the possibility that I would not be able to go back to visit my 91 years old mother.  

1. A FEW WORDS TO MS. MEIMEI FOX AND MR. ADRIAN ZACKHEIM 

I will not hide my disappointment in the quality of the editing and proofreading efforts that was put into the book. In addition to some typos and misplaced punctuation  there are obvious factual mistakes, which calls into question the quality of work on memoirs published by Penguin Publishing. 

Example 1: Ms. Fu had a $80 traveler's check when she arrived the United States in 1984 (p. 3). China did not issue traveler's check in the 1980s. Many commentators have pointed this out. But towards the end of the book when Ms. Fu re stated how poor she was in 1984 and said she got an eighty-dollar cashier's check from Bank China (sic). Yes, Bank of China did issue cashier's checks that time. This inconsistency should have been corrected by Penguin Publishing's editor. 

Example 2: Ms. Fu described a time when Mao invited people to Beijing to listen to his speech in People's Square (p. 15). The proper name of the public square should be Tiananmen Square. After the intensive reporting by American media during an event in China during the spring of 1989, Tiananmen Square should be an easy name to remember. Such a mistake may not mean much to the overall credibility of her memoir, but it reflects negatively on the professionalism of the ghostwriter and the editor. It would be like calling the White House a Big Caucasian Mansion.  

Example 3: At the end of a letter Ms. Fu wrote to her Shanghai parents she used the words "XOXO" (p. 31). I understand it was an English translation. Even if Ms. Fu at age 8 would write "Hugs and Kisses," which was unlikely during 1960s in China, such an expression of love and affection is not the norm given the social and political setting of her memoir. 

Example 4: Ms. Fu was rescued by the [Albuquerque] police (p. 8). At the police station, "two burly policemen began to interrogate me." It is unlikely that law enforcement officers from Albuquerque would "interrogate" an alleged victim. It should be "interview me," if that even actually happened. 

Example 5: "The police tried to get me to press kidnapping charges against the Vietnamese man. I refused..." (pp. 8-9). 

Kidnapping is a criminal offense, and the prosecutor can press charges against the alleged kidnapper in a criminal action. In some states, the victims could refuse to testify, making the criminal prosecution difficult. The alleged victim can also decide whether she would like to bring a separate civil lawsuit to recover her medical expenses and seek other monetary damages. It is hard to believe that Ms. Fox, the co-author and Niki Papadopoulos, the editor, did not pick up on a basic point in American criminal justice . 

Example 6: Ms. Fu stated that after she learned how to drive, she went to work in a "fancy Chinese restaurant that just opened in Santa Fe" (p. 60). ... "Santa Fe was an artistic city, and many Hollywood stars had second homes there. Linda Evans, John Wayne, and Miles Davis all came to our restaurant..." 

John Wayne died in 1979, when Ping Fu was still a college student in [Suzhou, China].What year did Ms. Fu go to work in that "just opened" restaurant? If Ms. Fu just randomly put movie stars into her memoir to make it more scintillating, her American co-author and editor should have corrected such flagrant error, instead of allowing such mistake to go into final print. 

Example 7: Ms. Fu wrote in detail about her flight experience, e.g., the hair color of the flight attendant, and that she could not order anything to eat due to her poor English and fears of high costs (p. 3). She wrote that it was a 14-hour flight from Shanghai to San Francisco.  

However, she should have realized that no direct flight between Shanghai and San Francisco existed in 1984. As a matter of fact, "The first scheduled non-stop flight between the two countries by a U.S. carrier took place on May 1, 1996, between Detroit and Beijing, and was operated by Northwest Airlines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_route_authority_between_the_United_States_and_the_People's_Republic_of_China). 

This was a major mistake in her book because Ms. Fu's flight experience was supposed to show how poor her English was and what a "nobody" she was when she came to America. 

There are more factual mistakes throughout her memoir.  

Mr. Zackheim made the following statement, as reported by The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/04/ping-fu-book-chinese-critics), that Portfolio had no plans to look into the veracity of the book. "This is a memoir of a woman's life, it's not a work of journalism. Are there errors in the book? I can't say, but if there are they are errors of memory."  

Mr. Zackheim's statement is very socially irresponsible to both the readers and Ms. Fu, the author herself.  

There are more serious issues in the book due to a lack of understanding of China's political, social and educational environments. I do not believe that the editor and ghostwriter should be responsible for these mistakes on historical, social and geographical background. There was no way for them to have known to question some of the details in Ms. Fu's story. Below is an example of such mistakes: 

There is a photo of a group of Junior Red Guard including Ms. Fu in the book. There is a traditional Chinese tower in the background. That structure, Ling Gu Tower, is a very famous landmark in Nanjing. Ms. Fu, when she defended her memoir in her Huffington Post interview, claimed that photo was taken at the school. 

Why did she state that the photo was taken in a different location while the tower is clearly in the photo? The photo shows clearly that the group of Junior Red Guard took a field trip to the park, directly contradicting Ms. Fu's story about her miserable childhood.  

Again, readers should not hold Ms. Fox and Mr. Zackheim responsible for these type of errors. 

I sincerely hope Meimei Fox and Adrian Zackheim can read this post and help Ms. Fu in correcting her errors before publishing the 2nd edition of her memoir.  

2. THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION (CR) 

CR plays a major role in her memoir. Ms. Fu contrasts the darkness of her life during CR with her success in the United States. This is also an area where many Chinese American readers found many fabrications. 

2.1 Labels in CR 

During CR, there were a few words specifically used to describe the enemies of the Communist Party and Mao. People with these labels were treated inhumanely during CR. For example,
Black Gang (黑帮): used to label government officials deemed as anti-Mao and the Party
Bad elements （坏分子）： used to label ordinary people who had different views from Mao, common criminals and other types of persons who were considered against Mao. "Bad elements" was broadly used during CR. 

Five Black People (黑五类）: Landlords, Rich Peasants, Anti-Revolutionists, Bad Elements, and Rightists.  

"Puppy" (狗崽子; Dog's baby): this was a special term used to label the children of Black Gang or Bad Element. Ms. Fu would be in this category.  

In traditional Chinese culture, dogs were not considered as lovely pets. Dogs had very low "social status." If one person said to another "you are a dog," it would be very abusive, possibly causing a physical fight. Calling a person "SOB" would definitely lead to a fight! 

During CR, being labeled as a "Puppy" (Dog's baby) was very humiliating and disgraceful.
Throughout Ms. Fu's memoir, she used the term "black element" as the label she was supposed to have had during her childhood. She also uses this label in her talks and speeches today.
It is an incorrect label. One could possibly argue for her that it was a minor translation mistake. However, compared with the other details of her childhood given in her book, it does not appear to be a simple mistake. To me, Ms. Fu was not familiar with those labels, and she was never branded a `black element." 

2.2 Big Revolutionary Travel (革命大串联） 

On page 15: "One day, a frenzy of excitement swept the country as Mao eliminated train fares and invited millions of Chinese to travel to Beijing to see him speak in the People's Square (Tiananmen Square). My brothers were excited and applied to make the trip, but Mao's army was conducting background checks that extended back for three generations. If you received verification that your family tree was `clean'...." 

The turmoil of CR reached its peak during the "frenzy of excitement" period of time known as "Big Revolutionary Travel." During that time, train rides were free nationwide, as correctly described by Ms. Fu. However, Mao's invitation was issued to middle/high school and college students, not generally to "millions of Chinese." Ms. Fu's term, "millions of Chinese," indicated that she did not have basic knowledge of this historic event.  

Furthermore, in terms of free train ride, any student with a "Red Guard" armband could get on the train. As a matter of fact, students could go anywhere in the country, not only to Beijing. Ms. Fu said her brother could not participate because "Mao's army was conducting background checks..." 

Nobody checked the background of students. I, then labeled as a "puppy," was able to travel to a few cities to see my relatives without the Red Guard armband. 

In addition, Ms. Fu did not know that the army's involvement during CR came much later. During the early stage of CR, Mao kept the army out of the political arena.  

2.3 Food Stamp? 

On page 33: "I learned later that week that each of us got rations from the Communist government. We could collect food stamps from neighborhood community office and exchange these for products at the community store."  

This "food stamp" concept may be borrowed from those given to low-income families in the United States. What Ms. Fu described here was unheard of during CR. The Red Guard would rather let the "bad elements" starve and die than give them free food. Even if there was something close to a free food stamp during CR, it would be issued to workers, peasants and army's families.  

2.4 Announcement of Mao's death 

On page 225, Ms. Fu told how she and Jie Jie went to a Western-style restaurant in Shanghai. During their dinner, they heard news of Mao's death. At that time in China, restaurants did not open for dinner until 5 p.m. or later. When they arrived, there were "a dozen patrons seated at table inside" already. "About an hour into our meal," Ms. Fu said, she and Jie Jie heard the news on the radio that Mao had passed away (p. 226).  

Ms. Fu did not know that the announcement of Mao's death was made exactly at 4 p.m. on Sept 9, 1976. Yes, one can argue that it was minor detail that Ms. Fu did not pay attention to. However, she remembered other details of that meal including what they ordered and how she felt at that moment when the announcement was heard on the radio. Later in her book, Ms. Fu described Mao's death has a major turning point in her life.  

There are some similar "minor" details Ms. Fu missed. I do not have time to point them out one by one. She did not seem to care about the history she was trying to tell. 

By the way, for that meal, Ms. Fu said it was a treat by Jie Jie because Jie Jie "had just received her paycheck"(p. 226). It should be "her pay" because at that time, there was nothing in China called "paycheck." The monthly (everyone was paid monthly) pay was made in cash. This would qualify as a minor mistake. 

2.5 The Gang Rape 

I do not have direct evidence to argue against this event. I can only say that it was less likely to happen during CR. Red Guard was a special group of people during CR. Especially in the early stage of CR, Red Guard members were proud of themselves because of their revolutionary family origin. A group Red Guard consisting of teenagers engaged in a gang rape? It was unheard of. In the middle of a soccer field?  

Ms. Fu has a vivid description of the beating and the gang rape in her book: "`Beat her!' one of the boys cried as he dropped me onto the ground at their feet. `Beat Fong's dirty little concubine.' The teenagers began kicking me like a soccer ball. `Get her, beat her! She's a filthy girl.' I curled in on myself, attempting to protect my head, face and stomach from the sharp blows. One of the boys kicked me so hard that I flew into the air and landed on another boy's steel-tipped worker's boots. I heard crack like a tree branch splitting and felt a sharp pain in my tailbone... 

"all I could do was feel the boys cutting my clothes off, the knife ripping into my armpit and my bare stomach, and the pain of something blunt pressing between my legs. I lost consciousness" (page 77). 

During CR, the common choices of weapons for Red Guard were various military type of belts (武装带）with heavy metal buckles and wooden sticks. In all cases I have studied, I have not seen Red Guard using knives. In addition, it was rare for teenagers, Red Guard or not, to carry knives on a daily basis. Large size knives were heavily used by factory workers when they fought in groups (武斗）due to different political views.  

Her memory of a knife cutting off her clothe was more like a scene in Hollywood movies. However, that tragedy should not happen to anybody in the world. In Ms. Fu's case, I sincerely hope that Ms. Fu's memory was inaccurate!

3. INFANTICIDE 

Infanticide is a major factor for Ms. Fu to be "deported" or "expelled." 

Ms. Fu has a fair description of the general background of infanticide in China. However, the following description was truly beyond anybody's imagination (page 254): 

"Our school, officials would confirm that all female students were menstruating each month by checking their sanitary napkins. When they discovered that some women cheating by bringing in their friends' soiled pads, the officials began inserting their fingers directly into our vaginas to check for blood. The degrading practice made me wonder how the rest of China was responding to the one-child policy. Uncle W gave me his blessing, saying this sounded like a powerful humanitarian topic. Even the Communist Party leader at my school approved."
After being challenged with this particular method later, Ms. Fu changed her memory of the method from "fingering by school officials " to "self fingering by female students." According to her memoir, she was examined that way, too.  

Ms. Fu failed to explain why school officials would exam, regardless of the methods, those female students who were not even married. There were thousands of female students at the time Ms. Fu was there. However, Ms. Fu seems to be the only one that has such a memory. As a matter of fact, such physical examination was not heard of or used anywhere else in China even when baby killing was an ongoing social issue. 

I won't comment further on this point. Hopefully, Ms. Fu will take this "menstrual policing by school officials" out of the 2nd edition. Simply, it is not an error in memory; it is an imagined event! 

Another issue under infanticide: 

"I spent a few months traveling around the Chinese countryside conducting research. I interviewed doctors and midwives, as well as farmers and government officials. What I discovered was shocking. Everywhere in rural area, infant girls were being killed. In spite of decades of Communist propaganda about the equality of the sexes, our remained a patriarchal society.... I witnessed the horrifying consequences with my own eyes: female infants drowned in rivers and lakes, umbilical wounds still fresh: baby girls tossed into garbage bins. Women I spoke to sobbed hysterically as they told me how their husband had taken their female infant away from them immediately after giving birth or how local officials had forced them to have abortion even in their ninth month of pregnancy. I didn't think there was any way I could help, but at least, I thought, I could offer them an opportunity to unload their burdens and cry on a sympathetic shoulder." 

Baby killing constitutes a dark page in China's history. We need to acknowledge such history! However, Ms. Fu, when pulling up this piece of her memory, she was not aware of an important issue. She simply mentioned it, but did not seem to understand it.  

The couples that long for a baby boy to carry their family names would kill the first baby if it was a girl. Nevertheless, when government officials, hospitals and birth clinics enforced the one child policy, they would abort all second babies, regardless of the baby's gender. There were cases where government officials were murdered by the parents who found out that the forced abortion killed a baby boy.  

I seriously doubt Ms. Fu conducted the field study as she claimed. If she did, she would know baby boys were killed as well. This is a fact that most Americans were not aware of. 

Here is an analogy: one claims to have visited the White House, but after the visit, s/he does not know that the White House is the home of the US President!  

4. EDUCATION 

Education is another area in Ms. Fu's book that caused major discussions regarding her fabrications. In Ms. Fu's efforts to write a rags-to- riches story, only knowing three English words became a colorful background of a successful entrepreneur.  

Going to College:  

When reading through this part of her memoir, I totally got lost. Ms. Fu's timeline and her school efforts do not make any sense.  

Let me provide a quick history lesson. To some, you may not care about the timeline. If you keep reading here, you will see my points. 

Ms. Fu mentions in her book that in 1977 (p.230): "The Cultural Revolution had ended. All at once, schools everywhere reopened--not only universities, but also elementary, middle, high, and night schools began to offer classes literally from six a.m. until midnight"... 

In 1966 all schools were closed when CR started. However, in 1967-1968, only a little more than a year later, all schools were re-opened. Of course, students were required to come to campuses although they learned nothing at school. In 1974-1975 Deng Xiaoping partially restored the education system. As a result, students in school started learning something.  

It is OK if Ms. Fu did not know this piece of history well. But, her statement was wrong.
The part that confuses me was her school entry class: Class of 1977, or Class 1978? In her book, Ms. Fu seems to be in Class 1977, but she later indicated that Ms. Fox, her ghostwriter, made a mistake; it should be Class 1978. Now, let us look at the actual timeline. 

CR ended in 10/1976. It was the time when Ms. Fu was in Shanghai and heard the news of Mao's death (09/1976) and the arrest of Gang of Four (10/1976). She went back to Nanjing in 10/1976. She said she started studying "like a sponge trying to soak up the entire ocean."
"Nine months later, in the spring of 1977, China held its first university entrance exams since 1966." "Nine Months later" would be in July of 1977. Wrong! The first university entrance exams were given in 12/1977. If it was a mistake made by Ms. Fox, then she had to make other mistakes as well in order to make this mistake stand. 

Let's say, it was Ms. Fox's mistake, and Ms. Fu took the exam for the Class of 1978, then the entrance exams for Class of 1978 took place in July of 1978, not the spring of 1978. If it was the case, Ms. Fu must have spent more than a year and half in preparing for the 1978 exams. But, based on the book, after she returned from Shanghai, she indeed focused on the 1977 exams. Did she fail the 1977 exams and retake it in 1978? Only Ms. Fu knows.  

There is another "minor" mistake: Ms. Fu "heard that out of every ten thousand applications, only one was accepted to a university." 1 out of 10,000 was a remarkable achievement for Ms. Fu. Actually, for the 1977 exams, of 5.7million applicants, 270,000 were accepted (4.8%); for the 1978 exams, of 6.1million applicants, 400,000 were accepted (7%). As a CEO of a successful business, Ms. Fu did not even know, when she wrote the manuscript, that if that ratio was correct, approximately 33% of the Chinese population would have to apply for the exam. 

Ms. Fu did not have to make this mistake because 4.8% or 7% would still make her one of the top applicants at that time. 

On pp 231-231, Ms. Fu said "I was not accepted to an aerospace engineering program, even though all my life I had dreamed of being astronaut. When the acceptance letter came in the fall of 1977, it said that I had been assigned to study literature at Suzhou University..." 

For Class of 1977 and Class 1978, applicants for majors in liberal art and applicants for majors in science and engineering took 2 different sets of entrance exams. Ms. Fu could not possibly be assigned to a liberal art major after she took the exam for a major in science and engineering.  

This was not a minor mistake. Ms. Fox needs to make sure Ms. Fu can remember correctly for the 2nd edition. 

English as Second Language in Chinese Universities 

Yes, Ms. Fu was correct to state that for classes of 1977 and 1978, foreign language was not required on the entrance exams. One could choose to take it, but the score was only viewed as a reference. However, foreign language, mostly English, was a required course as part of the nationwide school curriculum.  

It is impossible for a student in Class of 1977 or Class of 1978 to have stayed in school and not learned some foreign language (or only three words).  

Ms. Fu stated in her Huffington Postinterview that "In college, English language classes were offered, but not required" This was just simply not true!  

By the way, I was class of 1978 in Tianjin Normal University, known in 1978 as Tianjin Normal College. 

The key component of Ms. Fu's book that motivates many readers was the part where she was deported/expelled before she graduated from Suzhou University. However, according to the application Ms. Fu submitted for her graduate study at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she did earn a BA degree from Suzhou University.  

"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." (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/04/1184660/-Ping-Fu-s-time-travel-machine). 

Her application to UICU is a serious problem for her China story. She either fabricated a degree on her application to UIUC or her deportation story is not true. Ms. Fu and Ms. Fox need to rework this part of the book for the 2nd edition.  

Becoming A Student in the Unite States  

In order for a foreign student with a bachelor's degree to apply for a graduate program, there are a few required steps: 

a. Take the TOFEL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). Each American university has its own TOFEL score requirements. In the early 1980s, the minimum score range was approximately between 480~520.  

If an applicant did not meet the minimum score, either the application is denied or admitted as a student at large, taking language class until the language level improves to meet the standard. 

Ms. Ping Fu's story seems to follow this route. 

b. Take GRE. In the 1980s, some American universities did not require GRE.  

c. Required official documents: 

- Transcript from the undergraduate study (some US universities require the transcript be sent to them directly from the foreign university). 

- A copy of college diploma 

- 2 to3 recommendation letters from professors/instructors of the applicants 

If Ms. Fu did not graduate from SuZhou University, she could not apply for a graduate program at University of New Mexico. 

- Financial documents: In the early 1980s, usually one had to have a financial sponsor in the US. A sponsor is typically a close relative who is a US citizen or legal resident. The sponsor would commit to offering any of the following: full financial support, limited financing, room & board, or any variation thereof. A sponsorship letter is simply a letter to the US consulate in the candidate's native country, stating background information of the sponsor including the current employment and financial abilities, and level of commitment.  

On page 260, Mr. Fu described in detail her financial situation: "A few weeks later, my passport arrived in the mail. I traveled to Shanghai, where I was able to get my U.S. student visa at the American consulate without any difficulty. The only hurdle that remained was finding enough money to purchase my plane ticket to the United States. I converted my entire savings from my factory work and the sales of most of my personal items into U.S. dollars, and received an eighty-dollar cashier's check from Bank China. This would cover the flight from San Francisco to Albuquerque. But, I still needed six hundred dollars to buy my one-way international ticket from Shanghai to San Francisco. Nanjing Mother offered to make purchase for me." 

3. Application form. In the early 1980s, there was no such thing called Internet. Ms. Fu had to contact (call or write letters) US universities to ask for application form and make sure she understand how to fill out the forms. Even she had someone help fill out the applications; she had to know more than 3 English words when she went to apply for a US visa. 

Between the time she was told to leave China as she claimed and this "A few weeks later," there were only "a few weeks." Ms. Fu did not mention anything about how she obtained all the documents introduced above in order to obtain "U.S. student visa at the American consulate without any difficulty." 

Although she made no mention of that important paperwork, we know that she was not that poor because she had to have money to cover the tuition at least. She mentioned later in her book, the person who helped her left University of New Mexico at the time she arrived. That person made some traveling before heading back to China. Obviously, that person was not her sponsor. 

A story like this would be more believable: "after Ms. A, or my family, paid my tuition, I had only $80 left when I arrived in the US." However, Ms. Fu chose to tell the world that all she had was $80 in traveler's check or cashier's check.

5. DEPORTED OR EXPELLED 

This is the most important motivator in Ms. Fu book. Since so many people have found inconsistencies in this story, I only want to point out a few interesting details. Based on what I read from the book, I have to say that Ms. Fu needed to know more about how China's police operated under the Communist rules before she put it in her book. 

As of today, China is still under an authoritarian regime. In 1982, did the police need to cover a person's head to arrest that person? Police in China is afraid of nothing--laws, human rights--nothing! 

Based on text of the book, Ms. Fu was transported back to Nanjing from Suzhou University. Then, she was left in a dark room for three days without being given any explanation before they released her.  

Pp. 258-269: "A few weeks after the house arrest began, I was called to the local police station and given my government orders. "You must leave China at once. You are not welcome back." a stiff-lipped officer told me. He instructed me never to talk about my arrest or my thesis research. "Don't embarrass your country again.' After a short silence, he then added "We know where your family lives." 

Threat like "We know where your family lives" would sound normal to Americans. But, police in China just do not say that because they always know that, and people know that, too. It is a threat in the daily life. 

In the next edition, Ms. Fu should change it to "Next time, we won't be this polite!"
Next comes a difficult task: How to explain why she was to be deported or expelled from China by the government but could not get a passport issued by the government. Here is her story: 

"I need to obtain an official passport from the Nanjing provincial government in order to leave the country...Chinese officials did not always communicate with one another or conduct thorough background checks unless an event triggered it. I was sure that when Nanjing Provincial passport office inevitably checked my personal record, they would discover the black mark from my Red Maple Society activities at Suzhou University. That might very well be enough reason for them to deny me a passport." 

By the way, it should be Jiangsu Provincial government, not Nanjing. Of course, Ms. Fox made this mistake.  

Ms. Fu explained to her readers why she would have difficulty getting her passport. But, her explanations showed how little she knew the subject. Throughout the history of communist countries, there has not been even one case where communist government wanted to deport someone, but would not issue the passport.  

For communist countries, from the former Soviet Union, North Korea, to China, they ALWAYS keep political dissidents under their control and make their lives miserable. Even in 2012, the blind Chinese dissident, Guangcheng Chen, had to find way to sneak into the United States Embassy in order to leave China. 

Although Ms. Fu had no clue concerning how communist governments treat political dissidents, she went ahead and put this story in her book. What happened next was even more interesting.
After she was let go by that man, Ms. Fu met "A beautiful young policewoman with a compassionate smile appeared and explained that she was in charge of my case." In her office, with great sympathy, that policewoman agreed to help Ms. Fu. 

When writing book, a search paper, or a letter, one has to build a flow of ideas so that readers can follow the story. The next paragraph breaks the flow of her deportation story. Here it comes: 

"A week later, a handwritten note appeared under the front door of my Nanjing family's apartment, telling me to be at the Five Dragon Bridge at two p.m. When I arrived, I found the policewoman and her bicycle leaning against the bridge's intricately carved stonewalls, where I had often played as a child. The young woman nodded for me to come close. With a glance over her shoulder to be sure on one was watching, she pulled several dozen sheets of paper out of a thick brown envelope and handed them to me. She whispered softly in my ear, "If the officials see these `Four Anti' black marks in your file, they will never let you leave China. Hold down to them while I go get your passport issued." Then, she disappeared on her bicycle."
What the policewoman told Ms. Fu contradicts the entire deportation story. This meeting described by Ms. Fu indicates that Ms. Fu wanted to leave China, worrying about not being able to leave. 

Logically, when the policewoman told her "they will never let you leave China," Ms. Fu's reaction should be: "I did not want to leave. It was them that force me to leave." This would be more of a support to the story Ms. Fu wanted readers to believe because at that time, Ms. Fu knew no English and no money to travel abroad. 

As described by Ms. Fu, the meeting was supposed to be secretive, but that policewoman arranged to have the meeting at the Five Dragon Bridge in the middle of an afternoon. The Five Dragon Bridge is a well known tourist site located south of the Ming Palace. During the day, there would be a lot of foot traffic. If the policewoman was so concerned with being watched, she could have picked a more private location.  

At this meeting, the policewoman showed Ms. Fu her own personal records. Here, again, Ms. Fu made another mistake. She saw on her records there were the five Antis: "Anti Communist, anti-socialist, anti-stability and anti-China--printed these in ink." 

"Anti-Stability?" Stability was a slogan the Party started using in 2004 by the Party boss, Jingtao Hu. In 1982, there was no such crime label. This is a mistake that could not possibly be made by Ms. Meimei Fox. 

When making a story like this, one has to at least know something about the history.
Then, the policewoman left Ms. Fu the bridge alone: 

"Four hours, I waited nervously, the paper clasped tightly in my sweaty hands. Finally, the young woman returned. With a grin, she quickly took the paper from me and stuffed them back into the brown envelope containing the rest of my personal file. Then, she jumped onto her bicycle, turned her head back toward me, and called out, "Make China proud, Ping. I know you will." 

So far, the story does not make any sense. Why did that policewoman leave and come back after four hours? She could simply show the records to Ms. Fu, tell her she would get the passport issued, and end the secret meeting quickly. 

There was another issue for this story that Ms. Fu did not understand. That is, her personal records at that point should be at Suzhou University where she was still a student.
Let me pause and explain the Personnel Records and Residence Registration System in China for our American readers.  

The Personnel Records System (PRS) is somewhat similar to what we have in the United States, but it contains much more extensive personal and family information about a person. In China, you would have a personnel record as early as the first grade. It would contain all major events (e.g., marriage, awards, disciplinary action against you, etc.) in your life. The personnel record goes with you for your entire life, from elementary school, middle and high schools, college, and your work unit. If you retire or die, your personnel record remains at the last employer's archive. This is a simplified description of PRS.  

The Residence Registration System (RRS) is probably the most evil and notorious method the Chinese government used to control people in that country. Combined with PRS, RRS deprives people of their right to move their residence from one place to another freely, their rights to switch jobs freely, switch schools freely and a great deal of other rights.  

In China, each family has a little booklet called Residence Registration Book. The number of pages matches the number of family members. Each double-sided page has the information about a person in the family. 

When a new baby is born, s/he will have a new page inserted into the booklet of the family. A same set of residence data is kept in a local police station.  

For a family to change its residency from one city to another, the only possible reason was to switch jobs with the approval of the government. The person will have to have official documentation for the new job in order to register and establish a residency with the local police in new location.  

In Ms. Fu's case, when she went to Suzhou University, her PRS and RRS would go to Suzhou University, and the university became the legal custodian of her PRS and RRS. When Ms. Fu attempted to get her passport, she should be talking to police in SuZhou, not in Nanjing. Or her story needs to change the local police station from Nanjing to Suzhou. By the way, it is the municipal police, offically called Municipal Public Safety Bureau, that issues passports to its residents, not the provincial police. 

Here is the problem for Ms. Fu's story. Before the computer age, the management of RRS was done by paper and personal visits conducted by local police. If that beautiful policewoman wanted to get Ms. Fu's personnel record, she had to go to Suzhou U. from Nanjing with official ID showing she was there on business. She could not take Ms. Fu's personnel records away with her. All she could do was to write on what she needed to know from Ms. Fu's records. But, according to the book, she showed Ms. Fu "several dozen sheets of paper." This would be the entire personnel records of Ms. Fu.  

This part of the story could not happen. 

One can argue for Ms. Fu that the policewoman did go to Suzhou University prior to the secret meeting. But, this argument cannot overcome the biggest problem for Ms. Fu's entire deportation story.  

The underlying issue is something Ms. Fu would not possibly understand. That is, with the communist rule under Mao, Deng or any leader after them, military police and local police are forbidden from enforcing laws and performing their duties beyond the boundaries of their jurisdictions. This doctrine was established due to the fear of the top leaders in Beijing that neighboring municipal and provincial military and police forces may form their own authority to challenge the central government. 

Therefore, there was no way for the police from Nanjing to make an arrest on the campus of Suzhou University. Besides, it was not necessary. Even if Ms. Fu indeed did something wrong, the central government could simply direct Suzhou municipal police to handle her because Ms. Fu was a Suzhou resident.  

By the way, with some understanding of the PRS and RRS, we could see now that the story about Ms. Fu's Shanghai family vs. Nanjing family was highly questionable. Her initial residency should be where she was born. If she was officially adopted by her Shanghai family, her residency should go to Shanghai. The Red Guard that drove her to Shanghai train station, sending her back to Nanjing would not have access to her RRS because during that stage of CR, military and police forces were not involved.  

Simply sending her back to Nanjing would not make her a Nanjing resident.
Ms. Fu did mention in the book that one day Mao decided to return people to their birthplace. No such order from Mao in the history of CR was ever recorded.
My review of Ms. Fu's memoir is based the book itself and recent history of China. Any reasonable reader can now tell that the entire childhood story told in Ms. Fu's memoir is questionable.  

Ms. Fu sometimes missed an important timeline, like one regarding the announcement of Mao's death. Those minor misses only show how much she knew about Chinese history. We do not need to focus on those minor mistakes. But, these minor mistakes, in aggregate, do cast doubts on the credibility of the book. On the other hand, there are major breaks in timeline. 

For example, she was arrested on campus and sent back to Nanjing in the fall of 1982. 

According to the book, after several weeks, she got her passport with the help of that beautiful policewoman. Then, she got her student Visa without difficulty. That should put the time in the end of 1982 or beginning of 1983. But, she actually left China in 1984 with that direct flight that did not exist at that time. There was a full year that was not explained in the book. Given her life was in danger if she did not leave, what did she do to avoid being caught again by Nanjing police? 

In the book, Ms. Fu talks many things as she goes without thinking twice whether they were true or not. Due to my time and space constraint, I cannot point all of them out--maybe one more: 

p. 225 "the fervor of Cultural Revolution has been dying down. People were allowed great freedom on travel where they wanted and take leaves of absence from their work. I notified my factory boss that I was heading off for two weeks, and he gave his approval. The next day, I eagerly packed up a few clothes, jumped on a train, and took off for my childhood home..." 

This paragraph was meant to explain how she could go to Shanghai for a visit in the early fall of 1976. But, she did not know that in 1976, before Mao's death, two other top leaders died (Enlai Zhou, January; De Zhu, July). Mao's health was in question. The political situation in China was very tense, not "dying down."  

"People were allowed great freedom on travel where they wanted and take leaves of absence from their work?" If Ms. Fu had any idea regarding workers' rights during that period of time, she would not make this statement.  

Enough is enough! It is time to finish this long post. Based on my reading between lines, I have pretty good ideas about what would be the true childhood and her life after CR prior to her coming to the United States: 

Ping Fu's childhood was interrupted by CR which happened to millions of other children in China. She grew up in Nanjing with her parents who were intellectuals, and they gave her a good family environment. She went through the normal (relatively speaking) school years. She graduated from high school in 1977 and took the 1977 university entrance exams but did not make it. She re took the exams in 1978 and was admitted to Suzhou University in the fall of 1978. She graduated in the summer of 1982, but she probably did not go to the working unit she was assigned to. She started preparing to study in the US. 

Her route to the US should be Shanghai-->Tokyo-->San Francisco. Her life after that will be the focus of another review.  

Note, my review and analysis did not go beyond her 2012 memoir, Bend, Not Break. Another memoir written by Ms. Fu in 1996, "A Drifting Bottle: Traveling in America" (Piao Liu Ping), tells the readers a happy and true childhood of Ping Fu. 

Finally, a few more words for Ms. Meimei Fox and the editor of Penguin Publishing, regardless of the truthfulness of the book, there are too many mistakes most of which could be avoided by simply checking online or double checking with the author. A book like this casts serious doubt the quality of work by Penguin Publishing. It is rather disappointing!

Bent Fact: The Character of Bamboo

Fu Ping's English autobiography is titled "Bend, Not Break," which came from a life lesson she learned from her Shanghai Papa.

The Original Story
In pages 10-11 of Bent, Not Break, the author describes the story as

"There are three friends of winter: the pine tree, the plum blossom, and bamboo," Shanghai Papa once told me, "Pine trees are strong. They remain happy and green throughout the year. In the unbearable heat of summer and the severe cold of winter, they stand unperturbed." He plucked a branch and offered it to me. I inhaled the sharp odor. 

"The crimson petals of the plum blossom gleam brilliantly against the white snow," he continued, pointing to a tree covered magenta flowers. "The ability to bloom in the midst of misfortune suggests dignity and forbearance under harsh circumstances." 

Shanghai Papa then walked over to a grove of bamboo. "This is the third friend of winter. Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind by never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times."

Fu Ping also told the same version in many of her media interviews. There have been no inconsistency here.

The Debunking
The "three friends of winter" is indeed a very well known Chinese symbolism, so much so that even the English Wikipedia has an entry for it. While the celebrated characteristics for the pine tree and the plum blossom in the above version are correct, that for the bamboo is wrong. It is actually the opposite of what it is supposed to mean.

In Chinese language, there is a well known idiom "rather break than bend" (宁折不弯) which is a synonym to a more radical version of "rather die than yield" (宁死不屈). As one of the friends of winter, bamboo is celebrated for exactly this characteristic. Due to its unique structure of having hollow internode regions connected by solid nodes, bamboo is both lightweight and strong. The stems of bamboo are always straight, never bent. Tiny bamboo shoots are known to push away huge rocks in its path rather than "bending" around it.

It's true that bamboo wavers in wind quite easily and almost never breaks. That is a temporary measure different from bending, which is permanent as in some trees, to adapt to circumstances.

In Chinese literature, there are many poems and essays praising bamboo for being strong and not bending. In contrast, there are also many that criticize grass for wavering in prevailing wind. "Bend, not break" is never presented in positive light.

On the other hand, however, "bend-but-don't-break" is a viable defensive strategy in American football, which should be familiar to a large group of the Western audience.

There is no way to know what Shanghai Papa had actually taught Fu Ping when she was little and whether he intended to give a lesson of his own understanding instead of the traditional version. However, to present "bend, not break" as a characteristic of "friends of winter" is misleading.

Fu Ping's BBC HARDtalk Interview

On January 29, 2013, Fu Ping was the guest of BBC's HARDtalk, hosted by Stephen Sackur. The interview is also available on YouTube. The following is a transcript:

Sackur: My guest today is fast becoming one of America's most celebrated female entrepreneurs. It is not just because the company she founded is revolutionizing manufacturing in the digital age, but also because her own life story represents a triumph over long odds. Ping Fu was just eight years old when her life was turned upside-down by Mao's Cultural Revolution. She endured years of abuse before being thrown out of China. Three decades later, she is an adviser to President Obama on innovation. What lessons lie behind this extraordinary journey?  

Sackur: Ping Fu, welcome to HARDtalk. You grew up in Mao's China. Your life was turned upside-down by the Cultural Revolution. I wonder if the sort of disruption you experienced in your childhood in a sense prepared you to thrive in a business sector, the tech industry, which is constantly being disrupted, where the roles are constantly changing.  

Fu: When I grow up, with the life journey that I had, I had a lot of practice in self-learning
 adaptability to change, and also the endurance of resilience in difficult times. Those were the skill sets that I needed for entrepreneurship. I just happen to have a lot of practices. 

Sackur: I suppose it gives you an awful lot of perspective when you have had such a very difficult upbringing.  

Fu: That's right. My life had been turned upside down, from a loving family with a nice big house in Shanghai, to a ghetto in Nanjing and lose both sets of my parents: the parents who raise me and the parents who born me. In one day, I became a surrogate mother to my little sister. She was only 4 years old. 

Suckur: We're talking about the early 1960s. In essence  you were grabbed by Red Guards who were obviously working for Mao's party, working for the Cultural Revolution. Because your family was regarded as intellectual, they were relatively privileged. You had to be taken away and reeducated, reprogrammed.  

Fu: Mao said we don't need formal education. We needed to be educated by workers, farmers and soldiers. We had to work in factories, farm rice or learning how to march in the military during K to 12, basically. 

Suckur: You have described how in the early days there was a lot of hate in the souls of the young guards looking after you in the military-style barracks. You were forced to eat animal dung. You were brought close to death at times.  

Fu: Yeah, we were fed bitter meals and, at age of 10, I was gang-raped by a dozen of teenage boys and left on a soccer field to die. It was very hard. 

Suckur: It was a long time ago. You are in a very different place. But, does the power of the memories you have still live with you?  

Fu: It does from time to time. It will catch up with me. I learned for a long time to put it away by writing the book that just came out. I learnt how to heal those wounds.  

Suckur: Your birth parents were not the lady and gentleman who raised you. You had two sets of parents. Was there any way in which either your birth parents or those who nurtured you were able to reach you at this terrible time when you and your sister were living the most dreadful and hard life?  

Fu: Not during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. My birth mother came back when I was 13. She was put away when I was eight. Otherwise all of the other parents were sent to remote areas of China.  

Suckur: What was it that you found within yourself that allowed you, enabled you, to cope with what you went through?  

Fu: My Shanghai papa was very wise. He anticipated the trouble coming to my life. So he taught me the "three friends of winter". Before I was taken away from the family, he told me, Ping, you need to be bamboo, bend with the prevailing wind and never breaking. That is kind of a mental symbol that stayed in my mind.  

Suckur: It is interesting that idea of bending and never breaking? Looking back on it, do you think you ever came close to actually breaking?  

Fu: Several times. When my journal was burned when I was 12 years old. I think I thought about dying. I wanted to jump into the fire.  

Suckur: That's where you had written your innermost thoughts and kept a sense of yourself?  

Fu: I did not have anyone to talk to. I didn't even know where to send letters to my parents. So I kept a journal on the backside of the Communist propaganda for years. That was the only place I could express my innermost thoughts and emotions. 

Suckur: It amazes me in a way that you were so resilient. I guess it was partly of being young as you were. You're so resilient that when the Cultural Revolution, this very hard-line phase of it, came to an end you were actually able to resume studies. You made contacts with your family and you ended up going to a university and studying journalism.  

Fu: That is right.  

Suckur: But it was not the end of your problems, was it?  

Fu: No. Right before I graduated from college I was doing my thesis research. I thought I was picking a humanitarian topic, which is infanticide. I heard that the one-child policy in China caused farmers to kill baby girls because they wanted boys. I did not realize how widespread the killing was. When I went to do the research, in my bare eyes I saw babies being tossed into river with their umbilical cords still fresh. It broke my heart. I was a mother since I was eight.  

Suckur: You mean since you raised your little sister? 

Fu: Right.  

Suckur: It strikes me in a way, looking forward and back, knowing what happened to you, that you made it to the States and made it into business, I am beginning to feel that there was something about you that refuses to bow down to authority. You refuse to accept the received wisdom. Otherwise you would not have embarked on this challenging university dissertation about the terrible impact of the one-child policy.  

Fu: That is quite insightful. I think when I was looking back, I realized that even though I was brainwashed that I was nobody, I never really believed it subconsciously. I always wanted to be somebody. It was not specific. I never knew how to stop it. I kept travelling and wanting to be somebody.  

Suckur: You talk about brainwashing. What do you really mean by that? It is a phrase that is easily used, but in what way were you actually brainwashed through your youth?  

Fu: We did not study anything in the normal academic field. We always studied Communist propaganda or Mao's Little Red Book. That's all we have. I was told that I was nobody, my parents were criminals. I was born with black blood. 

Suckur: You're in a black file, weren't you? You were a black element. I wonder that you, in turn, having been dismissed by the party, by the system, were you angry with the party? Even before you left China, had you decided that communism was deeply, deeply damaging to your Country?  

Fu: I believed some of the concept of what communists taught me, about helping others and being good. Yet at the same time, I did not believe much of what they said, like rather to grow Communist weed rather than capitalist rice. When we didn't have anything to eat, weed doesn't sound very good. 

Suckur: In the end, you were forced out of the country. Some people listening to your story might wonder how come, in a sense, you had the great fortune to be allowed to leave China and make your way to the United States when So many other people who were described as black elements, put on blacklists ended up either in the most hard and difficult provinces working in fields or worse than that, imprisoned or even killed. How come you were allowed out?  

Fu: I was kicked out. I did not speak any English, I had no idea what American life is like. At the time I was running from trouble. I thought anything is better than death or being exile to a remote area. I knew I did not have a future in China. The future was unknown to me when I came to the United States. Back then, I did not know it was going to be a good future. I was just asked to leave and never come back again. 

Suckur: You had no family in the US, and you had never been on a plane before. There you were, a girl in her mid-20s, on a plane from Shanghai to California and then onto New Mexico. It must have been phenomenally daunting.  

Fu: It was very scary. No family, no friends, I did not speak the language, I did not know what life was ahead of me. At that time, the unknown was better then trouble.  

Suckur: I supposed so. Yet when I picture you as a young woman in New Mexico, with no language, no money and no contacts, then I think about how quickly you got on. Within a few years you were becoming a specialist in computing and software. What was it within you that allowed you to get on so quickly? 

Fu: One part of it is that America is a wonderful place for immigrants. Many people helped me when I first landed in the US. The other part is that I've always learn how to do things by myself. When I grow up there were no teachers or parents around. I had to learn cooking very quickly. When I was at a factory, I learned how to put lights in the factory, how to build radios. I had this ability to learn. I never thought I could not do anything. Life just throw  at me with many things that wasn't supposed to be when I was at that age. Coming to the United States was not as hard as the life I had from 8 to 18.  

Suckur: You were arriving and studying science at a time when the digital era was just beginning. The era of computing was taking off. What drew you to that?  

Fu: First I wanted to study comparative literature. I could not do it because it did not have English skills. I asked somebody what I could study since I did not have a math, science background. Somebody told me to look a computer science. I said what is that. He told me it was a man-made language that is used to make stuff. I thought to myself, I'm good with language and know how to make stuff. So I just picked that up. The interesting thing is, even this experience teach me that behind every closed door there is an open space. Every time life slams the door at me -- in this case that I didn't have the language skills, I end up picking up a skill set that is very beneficial in my later life. 

Suckur: You say that with a degree of understatement. As it happens, by the mid-to-late Nineties, you had alighted upon an area of software development and computer technology which frankly over the last ten years has become the absolute cutting edge of where many people think the next phase of the digital revolution is going. Perhaps we should in simple terms explain to people that your interest in 3D printing, in a sense shaping things by computer and then turning those shapes into actual products in a new way, it's potentially revolutionary, isn't it?  

Fu: That's the next big thing. It's as big as steam engine, Henry Ford, assembly line, or the Internet.  

Suckur: That's a big claim, can you justified it for me?  

Fu: When I was at Supercomputing Center I hired a student whose name is Marc Andreessen. We started the Mosaic that became internet Explorer and Netscape. After that success I went out to start my own company called Geomagic. That was 15 years ago. I thought about combining the internet with manufacturing to create the internet of things. That was of course way ahead of its time. I went out and I saw this machine, which is a 3D Printer from 3D systems, and I was just totally amazed by this machine. It can literally print a 3D product from a machine. Not just paper. 

Suckur: Out of this machine comes a tangible product?  

Fu: Yes. It prints layer by layer. If you print on paper you just grinned one layer. Imagine you add a layer up... 

Suckur: The best way we can make sense of this at least visually is to look at your shoes.  You have come in today to the studio with a pair of shoes that were printed.  

Fu: That's right, this is the 3D design and 3D printed shoes that is made to mold to the shape of my feet. So I think, in the future, the product design will be in the software code. The product fabrication can be locally next to you. The product will be built start with the person. We call it mass customization of personal factories. 

Suckur: If you think of a shoe company that wants to make big profits by producing millions of pairs of shoes for the mass market, they can't use this technology, can they? Aren't you talking about something very local, very small scale and will never in terms of cost be able to compete with the traditional production line?  

Fu: It's actually not true because the traditional shoe, the most cost is not in the material and the making of the shoes. It is the inventory, shipping across the sea, retail shops and shoes that made nobody wants. 90% of the cost is in that. Less than 10% of the cost is the material in making the shoe. In this case the material and the making of the shoe is not more expensive because the machine is making it. You can make it locally so you don't have to ship across the sea, which is not only cheaper but less foot print.  

Suckur: In a sense it is the end of globalisation, the end of making something that has to  be originated in some place like China and have it shipped to the United States. It is bringing manufacturing back home? 

Fu: Absolutely. In 2006 When Thomas Friedman wrote the book, "The World Is Flat". I went on the stage and said, no the world is 3D. We were sharing a stage. I talked about globalisation is passing, it is now about localisation. We live on one earth, we watched one moon, we inhale the same air. Localisation is very interesting. 

Suckur: We will get to that but I want to stick with the shoes are a little bit more. The material, what are they made of?  

Fu: In this case it is a linen, a natural fiber.  

Suckur: Linen shoes?  

Fu: Yes.  

Suckur: The idea of 3D printing, would it be applicable to other materials? Could you make things out of metal?  

Fu: Yes.  

Suckur: Obviously plastic could be quite amenable?  

Fu: Yes, plastic, metal, rubber, linen, ceramic. There's more than 100 materials. 

Suckur: Could you make a mix of materials? Let's be ambitious, could you make a car via a printer?  

Fu: Not today, yet some of the car parts can be made via a printer, and even better, because you can design geometry inside of the metal to make it lighter, stronger on impact, and you can use material to make new material, which is very interesting.  

Suckur: The what-ifs that apply to this technology seemed to run in different directions, one is a dangerous direction. We have already seen the notion of a Wiki weapon aired on the internet, and there's one particular student and some associates of his in Texas who are determined to use 3D printing to make a home-made gun. All you need is the software and a 3D Printer and he believes you can make all the necessary components for a working weapon. It does raise real questions about where this idea of home made assembly and production ends up, doesn't it?  

Fu: Yes, but I always believe in our human history it always good against evil. The gun doesn't shoot itself, it is the human that takes the gun to shoot. Technology itself is not evil. Right?  

Suckur: But technology can play to our worst instincts. One of the things that seems to me a danger with the spread of 3D printing is that it enabled piracy, copyright infringement, to become even easier.  

Fu: Maybe. But it could generate more innovation. If you make one of a kind, not one in a million, why would you care about piracy?  

Suckur: You care about piracy and Copyright for lots of reasons. The one story that intrigued me, a German man saw a picture of a Dutch policemen carrying his handcuffs. He took a picture of those handcuffs, blew it up, looked at it in great detail, scan it, and he was able to make a key through a 3D Printer to fit the handcuffs. It sounds extraordinary but apparently is true. That's the sort of danger that you could never anticipate that might come with your technology?  

Fu: That's true. But innovation is also going to create so many more solutions that counter those bad intentions. It's interesting, in human history, when good against evil, there's always more good and evil otherwise we would have been erased from Earth already. The reason we evolve is that we are always able to make solution.  

Suckur: That's a very optimistic view. I want to reflect again on your background in China, you've been appointed to the US National Advisory Council on entrepreneurship and innovation, but there are voices in the US saying that they are losing their innovative edge, especially compared with China. You have got a unique insight into both cultures, is there some merit to that argument?  

Fu: The US has been a very inventive society. We invented many, many technologies that have been adopted by other countries. Innovation is about invention made real. Our US or developed Western countries have this issue of not adopting our own invention. We need to look at that more.  

Suckur When Peter Thiel, I don't know if you have met him, he is the founder of Paypal, he said innovation in America is somewhere between dire Straits and dead. You don't share that view?  

Fu: I'm not that pessimistic. I think the United States is still quite an innovative country. I don't share that. 

Suckur: Particularly in your field, information technology, and other economists, Robert Gordon, he said the benefits of information technology have largely run their course, which suggests he is not quite as thrilled with 3D printing as you are.  

Fu: Let's wait for ten years and see what happens. I think he would have a lot of 3D printed things at his home. 

Suckur: Do you ever go back to China and perhaps think about launching your business, that's done so well in the US, in China as well?  

Fu: I do have a subsidiary in China that sells products we made in the USA. I don't think China needs to be a dumping ground. China has 1.3 billion people, would-be consumers. I think the competition between the US and China or the rest of the world is healthy. I hope we will all get together and live as one world. 

Suckur: Ping Fu, we have to end that. But fascinating stuff. Thank you very much for being on our HARDtalk.

News&Observer: Geomagic Founder Ping Fu Says Chinese Bloggers are Tormenting her over Memoir

The following news was published by the News & Observer on February 23, 2013, which includes an interview with Fu Ping in which she accused her critics as "Internet terrorism":

The way Ping Fu tells the story, she spent years trying not to write a book. 

It was friends and editors who prevailed up on her to tell her life story as a survivor of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. In her life they saw an inspiring Horatio Alger tale of a near-penniless exile who arrived in the United States in 1984 to become Inc. magazine’s 2005 entrepreneur of the year. 

Today Fu’s name may be better known outside the Triangle than locally. As a founder of Morrisville-based Geomagic, a 3D software imaging company, she was named by President Barack Obama in 2010 to the White House National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 

Then came her book, “Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds,” published Dec. 31 by Penguin. It chronicles Fu’s forced separation from her family, her decade spent in a re-education center, her experience being gang-raped at 10, and her witness to Red Guards having a teacher drawn-and-quartered by horses. 

The book received favorable reviews in this country, but the reaction in China was unexpected.  

Fu’s memoir was attacked online as a blatant fabrication by a Chinese blogger, Fang Zhouzi, who mobilized legions of sympathetic followers to torpedo Fu’s reputation. He alleged that Fu was no victim but a member of the privileged elite who is exploiting Western ignorance and gullibility. 

The attacks on Fu’s credibility took place in the midst of Geomagic’s pending acquisition by 3D Systems. She says the online offensive is ongoing and could continue for years, based on the attacker’s established pattern. 

Still, in an age of faked memoirs, accusations of fakery can’t be dismissed out of hand. Fu, 54, has been forced to defend herself and validate her account. She has acknowledged that her book contains some typos and errors, but she stands by the integrity of her writing as a personal memoir. 

In a personal plea in the Huffington Post, Fu wrote that the ferocity of the barrage has caused her to relive the emotional abuse of the Cultural Revolution. “This smear campaign reveals the dark side of China,” she wrote. 

In recent months her name has circulated in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times and other media outlets in a swirling debate about memory, history, victimization and self-reinvention. Last week the Times concluded, indecisively, that “it’s difficult to establish the truth” about Fu’s account as long as China is shackled by censorship and keeps closed its historical archives. 

The Daily Beast, an online news site, decided in Fu’s favor. The news site concluded she is the victim of an organized “hate campaign” being carried out by “an army of Chinese bloggers” who may be abetted by the party and government. “The campaign has morphed into a vindictive effort to destroy her life, to have her honors and awards withdrawn, the pending sale of Geomagic disrupted.” 

Ping Fu spoke to N&O reporter John Murawski last week about her new memoir and the controversy surrounding it. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: Where did the idea to write a book come from? 

I talked in the book that (in 2005) I went through a deep training, kind of a psychological and sociology training, and in there I got hypnotized, and I was crying like crazy, and that’s when my floodgate opened the first time. It’s called a Grinnell Leadership Training. He has a hypnotism session, and it’s deep. It’s the first time I experienced that. … I cried through three boxes of tissues. And they asked me why I was crying, and I started talking. … After I came out of the class, I was much more vulnerable and much more open, and that’s when the Inc. reporter was there. I would have never told the Inc. reporter my whole life story if it wasn’t for this session. It opened me up with the past, and it put me in this vulnerable position at the time. … I revealed whatever I remembered basically, and he wrote a big story. That event caused a lot of people following me with interviews, and I was approached by an agent to write a book. I went in, I did some research, I did a proposal, and I decided not to write it. They even assigned me a co-author. We went down that route. We spent a year doing research. We wrote a book proposal. And I pulled out. 

Q: Why did you change your mind? 

I didn’t want to write a book. It was too involved, too painful, and my daughter was too young. She was just becoming a teenager, and I didn’t want to subject her to the Cultural Revolution at that time. 

Q: How was the book idea later revived? 

Then my daughter turned 18, and she went to college. And somehow I had a lot of time in the evenings and weekends. You suddenly have an empty nest. And that just triggered me to write a book. My new co-author knows a lot about China. … She’s a ghost writer for the Dalai Lama’s book also, and she’s a Buddhist. … She takes a look at my material, and she says, “Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything like this. You should write this book. I would really like to help you. Why don’t we write a business book? It’s really easy. Let’s pick eight principles of Ping.” … The second thing that happened was I wanted to not write – again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to write a book. So I wanted to withdraw. 

Q: What happened this time? 

I’m an introvert. I never really wanted to write a book. I don’t have a strong incentive to write a book. … It’s a lot of work. So half-way through it, I don’t like what the book is. 

Q: How did the book project evolve? 

I needed to change the voice. I needed to write this book like I’m sitting on the kitchen counter telling the story to my daughter. So that evolved into adding more of the past into the book. So it’s at that point that I committed to writing the book – because I suddenly I felt like it’s a book worth writing. … I was also trying to show in this book the in-between spaces where the opportunity lies. So the two worlds are China and America, which have different ideologies, but at end the two big countries have a lot of similarities. Two mothers, one is very loving, one’s very analytical. And two fields of study, art and science. And what happened when I combined those – I was trying to show the opportunity lies between the extremes. It end up to be a business memoir because more than half of it is about business, entrepreneurship. 

Q: Did you expect Chinese nationalists to attack your credibility? 

This caught me totally by surprise. I thought maybe there would be some negative grumblings, but I never expected anything like this. 

Q: How do you explain the intensity of the attacks against you? 

Forbes did an interview with me, and Forbes translated that interview in Chinese. The translation had some errors in there. … But what really happened is the Forbes article comes one day after The New York Times broke the story about the (Chinese) hackers. My attack comes one day after. 

Q: What do you think is Fang Zhouzi’s motive? 

He even said in his second or third posting, he said, “I don’t care about Ping being the casualty, what I’m going after is Western Media.” So he mobilized a lot of people to assault every media outlet that’s here. 

Q: How did the attacks operate? 

I’ll give you an example on Amazon. My book probably had 37 five-star, all-good reviews the first week I was on a book tour. Within a week the amount of smear they had showered me with was twice as much as Michael Jackson’s book, “Untouchable.” The whole site is smeared. If customers don’t know me, why would they buy the book? It’s entirely negative reviews. 

Q: How did Fang Zhouzi affect your book sales? 

Tanked, totally. Totally tanked. I was selling 1,500 copies a day before this started. 

Q: And after the attacks? 

Just few copies a day. 

Q: What’s your take on this experience? 

This is Internet terrorism. It’s people hiding behind the Internet being extremely cruel to me. They try to smear my reputation, damage my personal life. They’ve done so many things. My ex-husband’s email from Austria and my daughter’s email from college, they put it on Internet and tell people to send them hate mail. 

Q: Has it affected your personal life? 

I have my security software coming up much more often. It used to be twice a year saying it’s catching something. Now I get it three times a day. It will jump up and say some malicious thing wants to get into your email. There’s high activity of something trying to get into my computer. So my assistant had changed all of my passwords, they came to my house and changed everything. 

Q: Do you ever wish you had stuck to your initial instinct and not written this book? 

I don’t regret writing the book, but I don’t like the experience because I’m reliving what happened to me when I was 8 years old. I’ve been publicly denounced, publicly humiliated, which is what happens in the Cultural Revolution. I don’t like those people bringing the Cultural Revolution to America. Who gave them the right to invade my privacy? Or attacking other people, or suppressing other people’s opinion? Who gives them a right to try to silence me in this way? 

Q: The critics claim they are suppressing lies and promoting truth. 

I always said it’s not about absolute truth. It’s a memory. Who can get 50 years of memory right? It’s a memoir. It’s what I remember. It’s my experience. It’s my story. I have a right to tell my story my way. I’m not writing a history book, I’m not an investigative journalist. I’m not a scholar of the Cultural Revolution. 

I wasn’t trying to be perfect. I was trying to be authentic and honest. 

Q: How do you explain so many people joining this online campaign against you? 

I must have stepped on some nerves, obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t have created this much emotion. What I learned is a lot of time when I read those very hurtful comments, those people are telling their own story. They’re angry. And somehow they use this forum to express their own anger or their own hurt. It isn’t even about my story. It makes me think that the Cultural Revolution has been over for many years, but it’s still very fresh in people’s minds. I have gone through the Grinnell Leadership, and opening up, and talking about it, and writing a book. It’s a healing process. And it was painful for me to write it. Those people have not gone through that. So through my book, it’s bringing out the anger, the frustration that maybe they experienced in their life. So I want to extend my compassion to them. 

I am still trying to get a handle on what happened.

Fang Zhouzi: Fu Ping's Two Memoirs in Two Worlds

The following post was published by Fang Zhouzi in his blog on February 27, 2013. It compares Bend, Not Break with an earlier autobiography, Drifting Bottle, Fu Ping published in China in 1996.

　　傅苹在去年年底出的英文回忆录《弯而不折》其实是她的第二本书。在1996年她已出过一本中文回忆录，不过是在国内出的（湖北少年儿童出版社出版），书名叫《漂流瓶——旅美散记》。这两本回忆录描述的傅苹生活截然不同。在把它们进行比较之前，我们先要说明《漂流瓶》的体裁不是虚构的小说，而是回忆散文：书的副标题叫“旅美散记”，书前的内容提要称“这部散文真实、生动地记叙了一位中国留学生的旅美经历”，书中附有很多张傅苹及其家人、朋友的照片以证明其所写都是真人真事，后记还交代了文中提到的真人真事的现状，傅苹在今年1月接受美国电台采访时说她在中国出的这本书是介绍她在美国的生活（http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2013/jan/14/bend-not-break-china-america/ ）。 

　　虽然这本回忆散文主要内容是关于傅苹的美国生活的，但是也时不时地会提及其在中国的生活。从这些回忆中，我们看到了一个与其英文回忆录完全不同的傅苹： 

　　一、傅苹从小在南京长大 

　　傅苹在其英文回忆录中声称自己从小就寄养在上海姨妈家里，把姨父、姨妈当爸爸、妈妈，直到8岁时文革爆发被红卫兵赶回南京，才知道南京有其亲身父母，而且与亲身父母的关系一直不好，内心还是把姨父、姨妈当成“上海爸爸”、“上海妈妈”。 

　　但是在中文回忆录中，傅苹没有一个字提到上海姨妈、姨父，也没有一个字提到自己小时候在上海生活。相反地，她说：“我是在大学校园长大的，校外那条有名的南京御道街是古代皇帝经过的道路，所以才叫御道街。”（p.15）“这是午朝门，离我家很近，我小时候常在这儿玩呢。”（p.88） 

　　近日傅苹接受《博讯》采访时声称：“自己的亲爷爷在傅苹出生前到了台湾，傅光培是她曾祖父傅慈祥的长子，因此傅光培是她的‘户口’意义上的祖父。”并附了一张她几岁时傅光培抱着她在宿舍楼照相的照片。如果傅苹是被上海姨妈、姨父收养的，由于姨妈、姨父都与傅光培无血缘关系，在当时在任何意义上傅光培都不是其祖父。 

　　二、傅苹从小在父母身边生活，并和其他小孩一起受教育 

　　傅苹在其英文回忆录中声称，她在1966年被赶回南京后，她的父母都被送去改造，她和妹妹单独生活了5年，到1971年时她母亲才回家，而她父亲则等到1976年四人帮倒台后才回家，在文革期间她父亲一直在东北伐木。在十年间傅苹没有在学校受教育，而是在工厂制作收音机和计速仪，一周工作6天，一天工作6小时，每天学习2小时毛主席语录。 

　　但是在中文回忆录中，傅苹一直就在父母身边长大。请看她回忆的一段小时候趣事：“记得小时候，老师最喜欢给我们出的作文题就是《我的理想》。当然啦，做作文的时候必须正儿八经地咬文嚼字，写得文采飞扬。所以，文章中的理想总是写得很崇高的。在家里就不一样了，有一天，我忽然对爸爸妈妈宣称，我的理想是做一个开三轮车的司机。这可把他们吓了一跳。中国的父母都希望自己的子女长大干大事业，有出息，所谓望子成龙嘛。这种小三轮车是很多个体户跑单帮用的，行动起来不但蹦蹦蹦地吵声不断，屁股后面还冒着黑烟，我们叫它‘放屁虫’。”（p.15）接下来她提到这种三轮车是开在南京御道街上的。 

　　《我的理想》这种作文通常是小学生写的，长大想当三轮车司机这种不懂事的理想也是幼儿园或小学生才会有的。所以这里说的“小时候”应指的是上小学的时候，也就是说，傅苹受过和同时代人一样的小学教育，写过相似的作文，而且当时爸爸妈妈都在身边听她讲述理想。 

　　三、傅苹从小没有吃过苦 

　　傅苹在英文回忆录中把自己的童年描写得悲惨无比，受到红卫兵的虐待，10岁时遭到十几个红卫兵的轮奸、毒打，在工厂当童工。 

　　但是在中文回忆录中，傅苹写自己为赚钱去给一个美国家庭打扫卫生，擦地板很辛苦，受了雇主的气，按理说这和她上述的悲惨童年比根本不算什么，但是她却说：“我在我的国家也是教授的女儿，被父母宠爱，何曾吃过这般苦，可是苦又算得了什么，气才真正受不了呢。”（p.11）这说明傅苹从小就是娇生惯养的教授女儿，何曾吃过什么苦？ 

　　四、傅苹没有被越南华人绑架 

　　傅苹在英文回忆录中，声称自己刚到美国，抵达目的地新墨西哥州阿尔伯克基市时，在机场被一个越南华人绑架去给他的子女当“妈妈”，被关了三个晚上，第四天才被警察救出。 

　　但是在中文回忆录中，傅苹在美国遭到的最大苦头就是打工，最大的奇遇就是谈三角恋爱和在高速公路开车爆胎，遇见的最悲惨的事是同屋的中国留学生摔断了腿却住不起医院，但对这段被绑架历险记只字不提，相反地，还说她到阿尔伯克基市第三天，就去和一个在南京时的邻居凯利约会去了，并抱怨说：“我来了三天，他才迟迟地与我联系，似乎有点过于冷淡。”(p.38)即使她记错了时间，把第四天记成了第三天，那么她那三天里处于与世隔绝的状态，凯利想要联系她也联系不上，她怎么会去怪他过于冷淡呢？可见她到阿尔伯克基市就一直处于别人能联系上她的正常状态，所谓被绑架，是胡编的。 

　　五、傅苹刚到美国时英语口语相当不错 

　　傅苹在英文回忆录中，声称她刚到美国时只懂三个英语单词，因为语言不通没法做任何交流，连飞机上的饭都不敢向美国空姐要。 

　　但是在中文回忆录中，傅苹两次提到她在国内时背过英语九百句，而且背熟了，一到美国就全派上了用场（p.2, p.7）。她去语言学校报到时，能用英语介绍自己“你好，我的名字叫傅苹”，能对叫简爱的老师说比较复杂的英语：“简爱，这名字真好，我很喜欢那本文学名著。”能用国内学的英语应付分班考试：“在国内学的一点点英文似乎可以应付一大半的考试题，我暗自得意起来。”（p.2）根据考试的结果，她被分到了中级班。(p.4) 

　　那么对这两个截然不同的版本，我们应该相信哪一个呢？在中文回忆录的前言中，傅苹说她父母亲帮助校对誊抄，即该书关于其国内的生活部分的真实性是经过她父母认可的。其对她小时候生活的回忆，对她在美国学习、打工的介绍，与其他人的经历相似，没有离奇之处（关于她在美国的经历可能有夸张的地方，但也不算太离谱）。所以很显然，她的中文回忆录要比英文回忆录可信得多。 

　　那么会不会是因为要在中国出版，所以不敢直写悲惨故事呢？她在英文回忆录里的那些离奇故事，父母文革期间受迫害，自己和妹妹相依为命，到美国时只会三个英语单词，在美国遭到绑架等，都不是什么敏感、犯忌的内容，没有必要回避。如果真的发生过，并写下来的话，不影响其出版，只会增加该书的可读性。 

　　所以傅苹自己也很清楚，她胡编自己在中国的生活，很难骗过中国人，用中文写作时，就要老实得多。她当时在学校工作，没有经商、没有名气，也就还没有编造自己的人生传奇的动机。但是等到她创建了公司，有了名气，面对美国人时，就可以迎合美国人对中国的想像信口开河编造自己的励志故事了，在这种时候美国人、美国媒体很容易骗。她没有料到的是她在英文世界的这些信口开河会引起中国人的注意，她17年前在中文世界出的回忆录还会被挖出来，两个世界的回忆录放在了一起，明明白白地揭示了一个骗子的真面目。