续：
H. Zhang says:
(continued from the main page)
"When I reached my Nanjing parents' apartment, I didn't tell them exactly what had happened, only that I had gotten in trouble with Communist authorities once again for something I had written ... 'I want to leave university, claiming a nervous breakdown,' I declared ... They feared that, given the black marks on my personal record, I would likely be sent to a far-off corner of China for some obscure job upon graduation. Such an outcome would force me to relinquish my residence in Nanjing, and I might never be able to return to a city again. It would be better if, by pleading mental illness, I could avoid losing my residency."
Quitting college to regain one's hometown residency sounds about right. Sending students with blacks to undesirable places was normal. As others have pointed out, Suzhou University was a Teachers College then, so its students enjoyed substantial financial benefits with the stipulation that they would be public school teachers upon graduation.
"I stayed inside for weeks as my family tried to figure out some way of helping me. They had several contacts outside of China. Uncle W was able to convince an Australian friend to sponsor me for a student visa. One of Nanjing Father's former NUAA students had left two years prior to study at the University of New Mexico, and it was he who would secure my admission to the school as an ESL student." This makes a lot of sense. Many students wanted go abroad then, and sponsored ESL study was one of the ways. However, Fu claims to be under house arrest then. People under house arrest have difficulty going to another building, let alone obtaining a passport to go to another country unless her family could magically predict the following event:
"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.'"
I cannot think of any reason for the Chinese authority to exile a student who was not well known even locally, let alone nationally or internationally. Also, her family's speed of securing sponsorship and ESL admission is astonishing - all happened in a matter of weeks at a time where there was no email, few or no fax machines, and internal calls were prohibitively expensive!
"However, one major obstacle still remained: I needed 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 the 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."
I do not understand why the authority wanted to deport a person while not providing the required permission for deportation - a passport. I thought the authority wanted her to leave because of the black marks in her record, not the other way around.
The book describes a very sympathetic policewoman trying to help Fu obtain her passport. It sounds like a secret underground plot:
"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 stone walls, 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 that no 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 on to them while I go get your passport issued.' Then she disappeared on her bicycle. I glanced through the files from my official record. When I saw the labels I had been given- anti-Communist, anti-socialist, anti-stability, and anti-China- printed there in ink, I knew for certain that I must leave. I was lucky that the policewoman had risked her life to help me get the necessary documents. It was a brave and compassionate act. For four hours, I waited nervously, the papers clasped tightly in my sweaty hands. Finally, the young woman returned. With a grin, she quickly took the papers 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.'".
Taking materials out of one's record was a grave punishable misconduct in China. I do not understand why the policewoman wanted to take even more risk by taking the record out, and handed some materials to the very person of the record in a public place. Is it because she wanted to show Fu that she was doing her a huge favor?
"I bid my family farewell at the Shanghai International Airport and departed China on January 14, 1984." This gives me another headache in trying to piece together all the events. She was arrested in the fall of 1982, and within weeks, she was ordered to leave China at once. What happened in the entire year of 1983?
I have noticed that all these bizarre stories of her leaving China would immediately make a lot of sense if one of them were taken out - imposed deportation; the whole story would become a typical one of a person with some unfavorable marks in her record trying desperately to go abroad in early 1980s.
Her savings was enough to cover the flight from San Francisco to Albuquerque. The money owed by a debtor of her grandpa covered the flight from Shanghai o SF.
The book's description of her time in Albuquerque is full of puzzles or mysteries.
"I knew how to say only 'Hello,' 'Thank you,' and 'Help,'". This is certainly questionable. First, it had been more than a year since she started to prepare to go to the US in the fall of 1982. It was unthinkable that she did not prepare her English skills more than speaking 3 words. The most damning evidence against Fu that I have seen so far was from a classmate of hers stating Fu was placed in an advanced English class at Suzhou University. That classmate blogged about her class extensively with many photos long before the book was published. I have no doubt about him being her classmate. Fu denies any English study in college. I hope more of her classmates will come out to clarify this.
She was kidnapped by a Vietnamese as soon as she arrived in Albuquerque, locked up and forced to babysit the kidnapper's kids for 3 days before the police freed her. She refused to charge the kidnapper.
"MY INITIAL PERIOD of settling in at the University of New Mexico was easier than I had anticipated. After the police dropped me off at the campus, friendly staff from the International Student Center, including some native Chinese speakers, helped me to establish my new life. They signed me up for English as a second language (ESL) classes and placed me temporarily in an apartment with two American sisters who were studying law. I could live there rent free until I got my feet on the ground."
She was supposed to be a full-time student on F-1 visa. Nothing of the description fits the picture of a busy full-time student. The first year is usually the toughest even for us on full scholarship with high TOEFL and GRE scores. Her student life appeared to have a lot of spare time for working on all kinds of odd jobs. It is not clear at all how she paid her tuition upon her arrival at UNM since she was penniless. She mentioned that later "I needed to make sufficient money to cover UNM's pricey out-of-state tuition and living expenses. When I asked around, people told me that I could earn more money as a waitress."
As an interesting note, she slapped the face of Sylvester Stallone while working at a fancy Chinese restaurant when he harassed her.
She seemed to enter the Master's Program in Computer Science at UNM effortlessly with no background in science or engineering.
"But when the professor put fractions on the chalkboard, I stared blankly at the strange notation, which I had not seen before." It is not easy to believe that a college graduate has never seen a fraction until the age of 26.
Her sister Hong seemed effortlessly joined her 18 months after her arrival, and Fu rented an apartment and owned a car by then.
Since Fu seems to be a very pragmatic person with extraordinary survival ability, it is puzzling that "Less than one year away from completing my master's degree in computer science, I dropped out of the University of New Mexico." The reason: she wanted to experience the undergraduate life in the US at the age of 27 when she was about to have a Master's that may lead to a decent job.
She went to the UCSD in the spring of 1986, started working at a software company whose owner happened to strike a talk with her on a beach when she desperately needed help. She was admitted to the UCSD in the fall and started as a junior after transferring credits from UNM and Suzhou University.
Fu disclosed recently that she got married in 1986, and obtained her Green Card through the marriage.
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Posted on Feb 24, 2013 9:46:38 AM PST
H. Zhang says:
III. American journey (1986 - present).
I regard this part as the core of the book. For this part, I would like to list the following major undisputable facts:
a. Fu earned her BS in computer science at UCSD in March 1988. Entering UNM and obtaining a degree there may sound easy, but earning a degree at a first-tier university requires some real work.
b. "I had a dozen job offers, including ones from Arthur Andersen, Honeywell, IBM, HP, Xerox, and AT& T Bell Laboratories. Most recruiters loved that I had a few years of real work experience under my belt in addition to a prized CS degree. I chose Bell Labs because it was world famous for its groundbreaking innovations and home to many Nobel Prize winners." Her transcripts at UCSD must look decent.
c. Fu was married to Herbert Edelsbrunner, an internationally renowned computer scientist, for 17 years. Fu does not have a goddess-like look. I guess that Edelsbrunner fell in love with, and married Fu because of her heart and brain. If Fu were a pathological liar as many accused, how could a brilliant scientist have stayed with her for 17 years and been extremely supportive to Fu's endeavor? In contrary to the claim of many reviewers including some who claim they have read the book, the book mentions her ex-husband at least 59 times (maybe much more), mostly affectionately, giving a lot of credits to Edelsbrunner for supporting Geomagic. It talks about how they got to know each other when Fu was taking Edelsbrunner's class at UIUC in 1988 - "One course I signed up for was taught by Professor Herbert Edelsbrunner, a brilliant mathematician from Austria. Professor Edelsbrunner was gifted in explaining complex concepts in a simple way. His style was exceptionally clear and illustrative, which made the advanced algorithm class an enjoyable learning experience". Edelsbrunner showed her his photos taken during his visit to Nanjing - "Hang on a minute, Ping. I want to show the pictures to you". "After the course ended and I was no longer his student, Professor Edelsbrunner told me to call him Herbert and asked if I would like to go for a walk with him at a local park..." It talks about how they started dating: "I didn't see Herbert for a year. He returned to the UIUC campus and I stayed in Naperville. In the fall of 1989, I went to Urbana-Champaign to sign papers for graduation and ran into Herbert at Espresso Royal. We went to his office, where he played Bob Dylan's album Desire for me ... To hear Herbert play it, utterly by chance, seemed a confirmation of our connection. I intuitively knew in that instant that this was the man I wanted to spend my life with... For many months, as I continued to work at Bell Labs in Naperville and he taught at the UIUC campus, Herbert and I saw each other only on weekends, commuting through hundreds of miles of cornfields each time. It wasn't easy on either of us. ... Herbert proposed in the fall of 1991, the year I moved to Champaign." She gave birth to their daughter Xixi in December 1993. "Herbert and I, that our eyes caressed each other with tenderness we had not found before." They went to Hong Kong together. "When a temporary position opened up in 1994 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to help them build a "mini-NCSA," I took it. Herbert came along and was offered a visiting professorship at the same university." It talks about how Edelsbrunner helped her starting and running Geomagic. "These printers depended on 3D computer models, which I wrote software to create at NCSA. Herbert was a leading research figure in the field of computational geometry... Herbert and I put in some of our own savings to get things started ... It was a rainy evening in Champaign, and the wind smashed against our windows as Herbert and I lay in bed dreaming up names ... At the start, it seemed that Herbert and I were the perfect partners to found the company together. He had depth and I had breadth. He was the mastermind behind the technology and I focused on developing the applications and markets. He could stay in academia and bring home a regular paycheck while I risked everything to start the company ... Although we used Herbert's mathematical insights and elegant algorithms to build our software at the beginning, it soon became clear that he wasn't interested in the business issues. Solving real-world problems was too messy for his academic research. He was a theoretician who preferred spending his time contemplating elegant proofs of unsolved problems while his head floated above the clouds. He declined working for the company, but remained involved with Geomagic as an adviser. He never questioned my judgment or attempted to alter my decisions. When things got tough, he always offered his wisdom and support with an air of detached collectedness... We didn't know how much money was needed to run the company, but bills kept arriving more quickly than Herbert's University of Illinois paychecks. Our first employees courageously offered to chip in some of their savings, but it wasn't enough." They moved the Research Triangle Park together. "Herbert had landed an art and science chair at Duke University, which made him happy. While I preferred to live in a big city, Herbert preferred small towns, so this area presented a good compromise." He supported her during the most difficult time. "I told Herbert that I wanted to use our house for collateral rather than the company's patents. I also said that I needed almost everything we had saved in our bank account- $ 250,000 at the time. Herbert didn't bat an eyelash. He agreed to whatever I wanted throughout the crisis... I was an emotional mess and took his advice literally. When I got home, I found Herbert and asked, 'Will you hold me?' He nodded yes. I lay with him on our living room couch for hours, filled with tenderness." I was surprised by how much a lady affectionately talks about her ex-husband. I figured they must have parted in a mutually agreeable way. I was stunned by the brief description of their divorce. "That summer of 2007, Herbert took a sabbatical from Duke to teach at Berlin Technical University... During the summer of 2008, as we were seeking out venture capital investors for Geomagic, I excitedly flew to Berlin. Xixi and Herbert's year abroad had come to an end, and I couldn't wait to bring them home. But when I arrived in Germany, Herbert told me that he was leaving me. Without giving me any warning or time to talk it over, he left for Paris with another woman. I packed up everything and came home with Xixi. That was it. Seventeen years of marriage dissolved in a flash. I felt as though I'd had the wind knocked out of me- disoriented and confused- but I tried hard not to show it... A year later, he returned to Austria and remarried. I became the primary caretaker of our daughter." Does this need any explanation regarding whose fault it is? Fu does not show any bitterness. Even more surprising, not only did she abstain from criticizing Edelsbrunner, but also blamed herself later. "I spent some downtime considering my divorce from Herbert. We had enjoyed a peaceful, supportive marriage for the past seventeen years, but how much time had we spent enjoying life together? Like most entrepreneurs, I had labored twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with barely a break since founding Geomagic in 1997. All my spare energy and loving attention I had devoted to Xixi. Even when I did have time for Herbert, I had often used it to consult him on business issues." She is certainly not a bitter woman. I would think she is a kind, loving and generous lady. This is consistent with how she kindly treated the ex-CEO of Geomagic who burned out almost all the cash and brought the company to near bankruptcy, then quit, and another ex-employee who sued Geomagic. A small note, when Fu and Edelsbrunner had their walk in a local park in 1998, Fu was still married to her 1st husband, but I am not sure whether Edelsbrunner was still married to his first wife. I am willing to believe they did not see each other for a year until both of them were divorced.
d. Founding, rescuing and growing Geomagic has been a marvelous journey. Her own savings was poured into the company to get it going, so was her sister's savings later. I love her quote of LinkedIn's founder about running a startup: "You jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down." She engineered the first round of funding, then handed the CEO position to an experienced business manager but without experience in startup only to see the company almost went bankrupt in less than 2 years. She took back the rein of the company, saved it with extraordinary tenacity. Geomagic does not disclose its revenue. "By 2005, revenue at Geomagic had grown on average 36 percent per year ever since I had taken over as CEO. We had more than one hundred employees across the globe." It has been reported that the company has been growing revenue more than 20% annually in the past 5 years during the economic downturn.
e. Fu was selected by Inc. Magazine as tis Entrepreneur of the Year. This title cannot be applied for or purchased, it is based independent reviews. The book described how much Fu was surprised by the news of her selection.
f. "In 2009, President Obama created the very first presidential National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and I was invited to be one of its inaugural members." This was 3 years before the publication of this book. I assume the White House evaluates the candidates of these councils thoroughly due to its high visibility.
g. The current acquirer of Geomagic, 3D Systems, a $3.4 billion company, is a longtime partner of Geomagic. I assume they know very well what they are getting including Fu who is expected to become the Chief Strategy Officer of the merged company. They must check books, not resumes.
Thoughts on the controversy.
Critics of the book started with valid questions. Some of their suspicions have turned out to be true, and more may come. They deserve credits for seeking the truth.
Some critics claim that they criticize the book out of passion for integrity and truth. I take their word at tis face value without any doubt. However, there are some with the same claim but show the lack of integrity outright. For example, some claim they have read the book, but their comments clearly show that they either have never read the book, or misinterpret the book intentionally and egregiously.
Integrity is indeed highly valued in the States, so is fairness. Innocent until proven guilty is something that many kids here know well. It is disturbing to see some suspicions have turned into adamant conclusions simply based on speculations without any solid evidence.
Let us use Fu's Red Guard issue as an example. Some accusers first insisted the second from the right in the front row with a Red Guard armband in the photo provided by the book was Fu, now they seem all agree with Fu's annotation in the book that the second from the right in the bottom row (or the first from the right in the front row) is Fu. However, they insist they see the Red Guard armband on her arm. I have zoomed in on her arm in the photo, and unable to identify a Red Guard armband even with the wildest imagination. There are many students in Fu's study session, and they even had a reunion in Nanjing in 2006 which the book describes in details. How difficult is it for a reporter to find one or two of so-called classmates to straighten out the facts regarding her life during the Cultural Revolution once and for all.
I have been pondering why the author has some grossly inaccurate statements as pointed out before, and may have fabricated some major events. The obvious possibility is lying to promote her image as her critics believe, but I am wondering if the following are also possible causes, though not excuses:
1. According to her classmate, she was good at writing, but mainly in fictions. Her mindset of fiction writing might have persisted.
2. The book describes a powerful guided hypnosis that broke her down by invoking a mixture of memory and dreaming. "I could not prevent the tears from flowing. For over an hour, weeping, and with my knees hugged to my chest, I watched the most tragic moments of my youth play out on the private movie screen in my head."
The massive assault on Fu is unprecedented. There are 3 possible sources:
1. The Chinese regime's trolls.
2. Spontaneous reaction.
3. A mixture of the above.
Most likely, it is a mixture most of which is spontaneous. Though the book is largely pro-Chinese regime, but the Forbes' article, which was a turning point, does not jibe with the regime well for sure.
I believe the truth will eventually come out. When that happens, I would love to see a list of all the accusations against the author with marks showing which are proven true, which are proven false.
The author says she does not understand why she has been attacked. I can sympathize. However, I do not understand the reserved defense by the people who have been a part of her life. I understand she may want to protect their privacy initially, but they have already been harassed by now as she admits. I try to put myself in the shoes of her Shanghai siblings who adore her according to the book. All they need to do is to come out and make a simple statement confirming Fu's time in Shanghai to dispute the most serious charge - Fu fabricated her 8-year childhood in Shanghai. They do not have to endorse the entire book. I do not see any risk of doing this. The same can be said for Fu's study session fellow membes in Nanjing, her Red Maple Society fellow members at Suzhou University, ex-husbands. The burden is on Fu's side to ask them to do so.
Ms. Fu, you have nothing to fear if you have told only the truth. If you have lied, you are enslaved by your own words, and only the truth can set you free.