Bend, Not Break

by Ping Fu

  —

  Finally, I set my sights on China. By 2005, the country of my birth had firmly established its position as a leading manufacturing hub of the world. We bought a company that Geomagic had contracted with in the past for software testing. Initially, we had them do only quality assurance work, testing our code during their daytime hours while it was night in North Carolina and our engineers were sleeping. Our Chinese employees proved productive and reliable, and we soon added a sales and marketing team.

  The biggest challenge in China was software piracy, a business condition over which we had very little control. Rather than fighting it, we chose to view it as a way to enter the market and establish ourselves in China. We knew that only the large multinational companies operating there would pay full price for our software. If the local companies, many of them too small to afford our products, wanted to poach it for free, we would go along with that. We would rather have our software used than not known at all. It could help local companies to produce better products faster and enable them to grow. Once they made enough money a few years down the road, we had faith that they would purchase our software legally—and we were right. Today, China is Geomagic’s fastest-growing region and comprises 15 percent of our total business.

  When I visited China in early 2005, I was amazed by the massive changes my native country had undergone. All signs of the Cultural Revolution had been erased. Shanghai was as modern as any metropolis, with highways above ground level and subways running underneath. It had become a tri-level, 3D city in the span of a decade. It had more skyscrapers than there were pine trees in Chapel Hill. I searched the street where my grandfather had bought his golden nugget, but the entire city block had been renovated with new apartment complexes and a shopping mall; I could not find anything recognizable. Although phone lines were still uncommon, no one needed them—now everyone had a cell phone. More impressive, I could get reception everywhere, even in elevators and parking garages.

  From a business perspective, I discovered the extent to which China had learned from and largely adopted American and European corporate processes and practices. It made it easy for Geomagic and other companies to do business there. Chinese employees operated under work-for-hire contracts just like in the United States; employers and employees could come and go at will without paying stiff penalties. Chinese HR companies could handle payroll, taxes, and benefits at scale for smaller companies. I found only the banking system and currency conversion issues tricky. Overall, it was a full-blown free market economy operating within a one-party society.

  For years, I had built up internal walls to protect myself from my ambivalent relationship with the birth country that had expelled me and yet was forever part of my identity. Now I observed a difference in my attitude toward China. In 1993, I had returned filled with nostalgia and longing to connect with my past. Memories of my childhood had overwhelmed me. On this trip, however, I arrived as a Chinese American entrepreneur. I found myself admiring and appreciating China’s advances from afar, with emotional maturity.

  I marveled at how ironic it was that over the past decades my two countries had grown closer together, becoming more interconnected and far more similar. China and the United States both were large nations whose people were capable of tremendous innovation and progress. How odd that, like twins separated at birth and raised by wildly different parents, the countries should turn out to be so alike when they grew up.

  —

  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. Yet managing our growing midsized global company turned out to be more challenging than I had anticipated. I felt confident about operating a start-up, securing financing, and managing global operations, but I started to feel that I wasn’t as skilled at handling people problems or communicating effectively.

  One of the common issues that I, like many other CEOs, faced was that I traveled frequently for business. Every time I returned to North Carolina, I would discover some fire burning. Such was the case at the end of the fiscal year in 2006. I came home from a business trip to find most of my employees up in arms about errors with their end-of-year payroll accounting. Geomagic’s HR consultant had made mistakes with the number of vacation and sick days they had taken, and in some cases even their annual raises. Compensation is a sensitive topic. Concerned that the issue was harming morale, I jumped in without knowing any background information.

  Usually, I would have turned to our director of finance, Gerrie, for an explanation. But Gerrie had recently left Geomagic to start her own company. So I walked directly into the HR consultant’s office and asked what was going on. Her breath shallow and voice shaky, she assured me that while she had made a few mistakes, she would redo the calculations and get them right this time.

  Just a few hours later, the HR consultant sent me the revised compensation spreadsheet. I spotted several errors immediately. Without pausing to consider my next move, I stormed into her office. “This isn’t right,” I said, eyes narrowing. I didn’t expect what happened next.

  “I quit,” she said quietly. She gathered her things and left the building within the hour.

  Now we were really in trouble. Not only were Geomagic’s end-of-year compensation reports still a mess, but we also had no director of finance and no HR consultant to fix them. I knew I had screwed up. My habit from the start-up days of Geomagic was to leap in and fight fires myself. But these days, I often didn’t have adequate knowledge of the situation. In this case, I had unintentionally ended up adding fuel to the flames. What I hadn’t known was that Gerrie had always been the one to handle employment benefits; I had just assumed that HR did. But Gerrie was the type of person who would take out the garbage and never bother to tell you she had done it. She had helped HR with tasks requiring attention to detail, even though it wasn’t Gerrie’s responsibility to do payroll.

  Fortunately, our CFO was able to handle the situation and our employees were patient with us while we sorted out their compensation in the following month. We provided transparency, admitting our mistakes and letting our staff know that we would correct the errors.

  I learned from this experience that I could become a bottleneck at Geomagic if I were to attempt to make all critical decisions and be a firefighter myself. I needed to trust my team to handle the day-to-day operations and not interfere as a “helicopter CEO.”

  There is nothing like running and owning a business to challenge the most dearly held assumptions you have about yourself. I felt myself tested emotionally almost every day. In order to excel as a CEO, I realized, one must be committed to relentless self-improvement.

  —

  To facilitate teamwork among our different divisions and geographic regions, and to identify the management team’s blind spots, we brought in a consultant to conduct a 360-degree review. This involved collecting feedback from supervisors, peers, and direct reports.

  After pointing out a few strengths and areas for improvement to me, the consultant added, “You need to soften up a bit.” He never would have said that to a man in a leadership position, I thought to myself crossly, recalling the affirmative action classes at Bell Labs. But, a small voice asked, what if he is right? The feedback piqued my curiosity.

  In May, I was honored with a Woman of the Year award from Business Leader magazine. They offered me a scholarship to a four-day course for executives called Grinnell Leadership training. I had heard good things about the class and thought I should give it a try.

  Six weeks later, I found myself lying on the floor of a retreat center in North Carolina with eight other business leaders for a guided hypnosis session. It was my first experience with such an exercise and I was skeptical. I rested my head on my crossed arms, listening to resounding drumbeats and sweeping music from the movie The Last of the Mohicans. We did breathing exercises for forty-five min
utes while the instructor told us to visualize artifacts from a day in our past. At first, I saw nothing but black—no images. My mind refused to go back in time. I became irritated with myself as my thoughts jumped all over the place. I kept remembering things I needed to get done in the office and at home. This is bullshit, I thought. I should get up and leave. But my body refused to move. Slowly, I became conscious of my breath, deep and rhythmic, spreading down from my neck to my chest. I drifted away.

  About thirty minutes into the session, I had the distinct sensation of falling, and the dam broke. The past rushed forth, scattering images across the screen of my closed eyes like an old movie I had forgotten I’d seen. Only I wasn’t watching the film—I was starring in it. I panicked. I was trapped inside a void, a littered inescapable void that was Room 202. I saw blood. I saw the guts of my teacher splattered across a lawn. I saw my journals burning. Then, for the first time in my life, vivid details of the rape flooded my brain. I saw the faces of my attackers twisted into sneers. I heard them shouting, “Beat her!” I felt the sharp pain of something entering me between my legs.

  Since arriving in the United States, I rarely had broken down crying. But all at once I was sobbing uncontrollably. One of the assistant teachers, a clinical psychologist, came over to where I lay curled up like a fetus on the floor.

  “It’s okay, let it out,” she said, gently rubbing my back. “Let it all out.” She handed me a box of tissues, but otherwise did not interfere. The warmth of her presence next to me felt safe and comforting, yet 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.

  By the time I had stopped, my face was a splotchy red swollen mess and the detritus of three boxes of tissues lay scattered around me.

  “Ping, would you like to share what’s happening for you?” Dr. Grinnell asked.

  Strangely, I felt vulnerable and safe in that moment. The crying had offered much relief from the pain. For the first time, I felt open to talk to strangers about my ghosts. Everyone listened attentively as I shared the memories I had repressed for so many years. I talked about losing both parents at age eight, the atrocities I had witnessed at the hands of the Red Guard, and being a surrogate mother to Hong. I did not bring up the gang rape and beating.

  One of the other participants moved over next to me. She held my hand while I was talking and hugged me when I finished. Then the others moved in for a group hug, and we all shared the tears. It felt liberating to know that I could talk about my past and feel so supported, so loved.

  Dr. Grinnell ended the course by giving each of us assignments to complete in order to help us become better leaders. For me, he had an additional assignment. “Ping, you go home and lie in your husband’s arms. Relax and feel the love,” he said.

  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.

  “You’ve changed,” Herbert said a week later. “You’re softer.”

  I smiled.

  A few weeks later, we visited Herbert’s parents in the Austrian countryside. I found myself riding down a dirt road on the back of a bicycle with my arms wrapped around Herbert’s waist, giggling like a schoolgirl. My mind was filled with images of my happy college days in China, when I had gone on delightful bike rides down country roads with my classmates.

  “Your mother finds the funniest things romantic,” Herbert told Xixi when we returned to his parents’ home.

  —

  In the weeks that followed the Grinnell Leadership training, my mind was haunted by the past. It had been thirty-seven years since I had been raped. I had long hidden away that broken girl, especially after leaving China. I had been reconstructing my identity in the United States, treating it as a fresh start. I had built up an internal Great Wall to conceal the pain. Now the wall had been breached, and those old feelings of hurt resurfaced in my consciousness.

  Around that time, John Brant, a reporter from Inc. magazine, flew to North Carolina to interview me for a half-page story on my journey as an entrepreneur. What happened next was a complete surprise. When John asked me to talk about my life, the combination of the way he asked, how safe he made me feel, and my wide-open state of mind inspired me to share the story with him. We talked for hours. I told him details about being taken away from my family, fending for myself and Hong, and I even shared with him about being gang-raped. John reminded me of Uncle W. He was a brilliant audience—caring, engaging, empathetic, and nonjudgmental.

  At the end of the interview, John said, “Ping, I’d like to come back and talk to you again tomorrow. Would that be okay?” I agreed.

  John Brant stayed for three days, further interviewing me and speaking with others in the company. About a week later, Inc. sent a photographer to shoot pictures of me. When he appeared at my office door, he had the magazine’s editor in chief, John Koten, in tow.

  “Is it normal for you to fly down for a photo shoot?” I asked.

  “No, but your company seems interesting,” Koten answered. He didn’t offer any further explanation.

  A couple of months passed. Work was so busy that I didn’t think much about the Inc. magazine article. In early December, I got a call from Paul Magelli, a former business professor I knew from the University of Illinois and my mentor when I’d first started Geomagic. “Congratulations, Ping!” he crowed enthusiastically when I picked up the phone.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Don’t you know? You’ve been named Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year!”

  “I don’t think so. That can’t be true,” I said.

  Paul laughed. “Maybe I heard it wrong. But I don’t think so.”

  A few days later, the magazine featuring me appeared at newsstands, airport kiosks, and Barnes and Noble shelves. Inc. sent me a couple dozen issues to share with my friends and family. The honor astounded me. Entrepreneur of the Year was an award given by Inc. magazine to just one person, one time each year. John Koten wrote in his editor’s letter: “Ping Fu, who appears on this month’s cover, is a moving example of what makes entrepreneurs so compelling. I have come to regard entrepreneurs as America’s true heroes and most precious economic resources. I gradually fell in love with entrepreneurs because of their humanity and courage. They want nothing less than to change the world.”

  It felt surreal when I saw my own face staring back at me from the magazine rack. Who would have guessed it? I—Little Apple, the broken shoe, a black-blooded nobody—was a cover girl.

  THE END OF AN ERA: 1976–1977

  IN 1976, WHEN I was eighteen, Nanjing Mother received good news from her sister in Shanghai. The two had been exchanging letters rather frequently for the past few years, mostly sharing adult worries about their husbands and children. Shanghai Mama had written that four of my five cousin-siblings had returned home from the countryside; Shanghai Papa had already come back from a labor camp five years prior. Nanjing Mother asked if I would like to go visit them, saying that they would love to see me. I felt excited about reconnecting with my Shanghai family. I was curious to swap stories about our experiences.

  The fervor of the Cultural Revolution had been dying down. People were allowed great freedom to 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.

  When I knocked on the door of the old Shanghai house, I heard footsteps running. All my family members came down to welcome me, their faces smiling warmly and hands waving in the air. (In Chinese culture, handshakes and hugs are less common between family members than they are in Amer
ica.) I felt a surge of familiarity and joy upon seeing them. Shanghai Papa was regal and handsome, and Shanghai Mama was still beautiful. I wondered how the past ten difficult years had not put any wrinkles on their faces. My older brothers had grown into tall, handsome young men carrying an air of authority. My older sister, whom I still called Jie Jie, handed me an ice cream bar covered with chocolate. She had remembered all these years later that I loved that treat the most. Only my grandfather was missing from the family reunion. He had passed away.

  We stayed together in Shanghai Papa and Mama’s rooms on the second floor of the middle section of the house. The newspaper agency still occupied the first section of the house, and two families I didn’t know lived on the third floor of our section. Shanghai Papa and Mama had gotten back an adjacent bedroom as well as a bathroom with a shower and toilet, in addition to the single room they had shared throughout most of the Cultural Revolution. Still, there were too many of us to fit comfortably inside. Shanghai Papa and Mama used the back room, which was smaller. The other five of us stayed in the front bedroom, which had a balcony, giving us space to stick our feet outside. We put blankets and sheets on the floor like a pajama party. It didn’t matter to us how cramped the space was. We couldn’t stop giggling, telling each other stories, and playfully fighting to use the toilet. At long last, we were reunited. As we talked, sang, and teased, my spirits took flight, like the finches that still darted about our garden. A smile illuminated my face, brighter than the sun.

  On my second day in Shanghai, Jie Jie took me to celebrate our reunion by going to eat at the only Western-style restaurant in town, Red House. She had just received her paycheck, so the meal would be her treat. I had never tasted Western food before and was thrilled to try something new.

  We walked over half an hour through the bustling streets of Shanghai to the elegant restaurant, which sported a bold red roof, and found a dozen patrons seated at tables inside. The waitress brought us bread and butter to start, followed by potato salad with mayonnaise and a breaded pork dish called “wienerschnitzel.” We loved it, authentic Western cuisine or not.