Ping Fu

Alternates portraying the author's life during China's Cultural Revolution and her exile in America where she eventually founds Geomagic, a successful 3D software company. Even if a good portion is exaggerated (as numerous accusations suggest), her story is still incredible and inspiring. Taken by the Red Guards from her wealthy family at the age of 8, she was imprisoned as the sole provider for her and her younger sister. As restrictions gradually eased she was sent to work in a factory and show more was then accepted to university where her writings inadvertently earned her the further ire of the government. Exiled to America with no English language skills, social connections, or money, she battered out her own American Dream. Resisting embellishment would have resulted in a more powerful memoir/triumph over shitty circumstances. Still, damn girl. show less

This is one of those books where I wish I had read the reviews first. As it is, I am seriously annoyed with myself for having wasted so much time reading the whole thing.

So much of this book defies belief. Here is just a small sampling:

- In spite of growing up in a dictatorship, where presumably people reported each other for anti-Communist activities and there would be no trust, and in spite of having been (supposedly) gang raped, we are expected to believe her first act upon arrival in show more the US would be to get in a car with a strange male
- She smacks someone for grabbing her behind while waitressing, and it turns out to be none other than Sly Stallone
- Her thesis for an undergrad degree in literature was on ... China's one child policy
- This same thesis, supposedly critical of the policy, was not only okayed by her professor, but actually published by the university
- Said thesis was supposedly the work that brought female infanticide to the attention of Chinese national media (who were apparently allowed to publish the related story) and then international media
- For this act, she was kidnapped off the street, bag over the head and all by the authorities ... for bringing shame to the regime... but later not only released without incident but got to leave the country
- But not before she happened to meet a kind female police officer who, with a bit of subterfuge that includes meeting in a secret location and temporarily hiding (apparently the only copies of) state documents that said she had additional black marks on her record (seriously), helps her get a passport.

Just a small sampling, as I said. Avoid this book show less

I think that Ping Fu is an amazing woman. Born in China, she was the victim of extreme hardship and violence during the Cultural Revolution. Forced to flee her homeland, she immigrated to the United States where she earned a degree in computer programming and eventually became a successful entrepeneur. Her success comes not in a cutthroat way, but rather with kindness, caring and grace.

Although I admire Fu and her accomplishments, there is an almost emotionless tone to her story as she show more shares both heartbreaking and joyful life events. It is unclear if the lack of emotion results from a coping mechanism for dealing with traumatic life events, from the author's introversion and discomfort with sharing personal details, or because the author has reached a place of forgiveness and peace. The lack of emotion left me somewhat dissatisfied as a reader. show less

Ping Fu has lived a pretty amazing life. Born in China just before the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, she was persecuted by Mao's Red Guard, which took her from her family at age eight and brought her to a children's re-education center, where she was forced to eat dirt and denounce her family in public, living in a tiny dormitory room with only her 4-year-old sister. Eventually the Maoist regime fell and Ping reunited with her family and was able to attend college, but then her show more activities that were perceived as being anti-government got her exiled and she fled to the USA. Arriving in America with little more than the clothes on her back and only three words of English, she managed to claw her way up into a computer-science degree and entered the software business at just the right moment (in the early 1990s). The company that she founded, Geomagic, became enormously successful and she was named INC Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year, among other accolades.

So, having summed up her life as above, one can understand why someone like Ping Fu would be urged to write a memoir. Her story is fascinating and offers an interesting array of insights into Chinese society, American society, the technology world, and so forth. Before moving to America and becoming a techie, Ping studied literature and aspired to be a writer, so it's not surprising that she would have a pretty good way with words, although it's not clear to me how much of the book's writing style comes from her and how much from the co-author/ghostwriter MeiMei Fox.

I felt that the book overall was interesting, but the earlier parts were more so. As the story progressed into Ping's rise to success and fame, it felt like she was trying too hard to inject a message/"moral of the story" into every anecdote. Stories of the ups and downs that she experienced in the process of founding her company and bringing it through the dot-com bubble and out the other side are interesting, but the way they are presented is a little too pat. Each one feels kind of like "this thing happened and I felt x and it taught me that y is really important, so I became a better person." That gets old after a while. By contrast, the opening chapters that described Ping's childhood life, her feelings about her parents, the traumatic experience of being forcibly removed from her family home and transported to the countryside, etc., are vividly written and intensely engaging.

The narrative skips around in time a fair amount, which also can get confusing. I understand that in accordance with the book's subtitle she is trying to frame it as two separate story threads, one concerning her early life up until she left China, the other describing her life in America through the present. For the most part, that division works, but there are places within that framework where she digresses or deviates into a different time period and then it can be hard to follow. She also skips over some stuff or "fast-forwards" a few bits that I thought might be interesting (for example, at one point she mentions having completed two years of mandatory Chinese military service, but no details are given at all; perhaps this is for political reasons).

Overall, if you like reading about interesting people's interesting lives, you will probably enjoy this book. If you're an entrepreneur looking for business advice or tips, my feeling is that you'll be disappointed -- it really comes across as that Ping Fu's success is based on a combination of fierce determination and pure luck; she does give some "life advice" but this is mostly very vague. But I would certainly recommend it otherwise. show less