Bend, Not Break

by Ping Fu

  Jie Jie and I were so enraptured by our conversation and the tantalizing food that we paid no attention to our surroundings. Suddenly, about an hour into our meal, she gave me a puzzled look. “There’s no one left here,” she remarked. I looked up from my plate and glanced about the restaurant. Not one other patron remained. Jie Jie summoned our waitress. “What’s going on?”

  Our waitress went to the kitchen, where she fetched a radio. When she placed it on our table, we heard the sound of foreboding music echoing around the empty room. It wasn’t just any funeral march; it was the music the government played when someone very important died. Jie Jie and I gazed at each other with wide eyes. My hands started to tremble. Then the announcer’s voice came on: “Our great leader Chairman Mao passed away today.”

  The piece of wienerschnitzel I had been chewing fell out of my mouth and onto the red tablecloth. I felt sick to my stomach. Blood rushed to my head, and I worried that it would trigger a migraine headache. I had been taught year after year to worship Chairman Mao. Even though I’d had my frustrations with our living conditions and the lack of freedom and choices, Chairman Mao was the absolute leader. It was hard to imagine that he was gone.

  My mind raced, inventing a thousand different possible futures. Who knew what Mao’s passing would mean for the future of China? Would our new leader crack down on recently implemented, more liberal policies? Or would we move in a direction of greater freedom of expression? Would we black elements finally be forgiven? Or would we be punished even more harshly for our ancestors’ wrongdoings? I sensed that everything in my world would change, but I didn’t know how.

  “We’d better get out of here,” Jie Jie said. We both sensed that it would be inappropriate to continue eating at a fancy restaurant at a time of tremendous national loss—people might think we were celebrating Mao’s death. We paid our bill at once and practically ran home through the now abandoned streets of Shanghai. Not even the streetcars were operating. It looked like a city frozen in time.

  When we arrived at our rooms in the old house, panting from our jog and our brows damp with sweat, we found Shanghai Mama and Papa and two brothers huddled around their radio. Second Brother glanced up and waved us inside. Only after we had shut the door behind us did a smile appear on his face. “Mao died,” he said, his voice elevated several notches above its usual deep, low tones.

  “We heard,” Jie Jie said.

  My family started whispering about what might happen to China. I mostly just listened to what my parents and older siblings had to say. I didn’t understand the intricacies, but I could sense that my brothers were well versed in the underground political news of the past few years. They felt certain that government policies would change for the better, allowing us greater personal and political freedom. I listened with intense interest.

  “It’s the dawn of a new era!” Second Brother exclaimed so loudly that we had to shush him, reminding him that listening ears might be surrounding us on all sides. He could be killed for saying such a thing—in the past he surely would have been. But at least we knew that our small room was a safe haven. Within its four walls, we could express our opinions freely. We shared hope for a brighter future.

  —

  The entire nation spiraled into chaos after Mao’s death. Everyone went into grieving. Stores, restaurants, and even factories closed down for weeks. Nanjing Mother wrote that there was no need for me to return to work; I could remain in Shanghai until further notice. I was happy to stay. I was enjoying reconnecting with my adult cousin-siblings, being around the loving comfort of Shanghai Mama and Papa, and exploring the city, which was so much more sophisticated than Nanjing.

  In early October 1976, about a month after I came to Shanghai, I returned to our shared rooms from a wander about town to find Second Brother grinning broadly. “Have you heard that the Gang of Four was arrested?” he asked. This was even more surprising news than that of Mao’s death. Mao, after all, had been ill for some time. The Gang of Four—composed of Mao’s wife and three of her close associates—had risen to power during the latter years of the Cultural Revolution. Now, Second Brother said, they had been accused of treason, labeled “counterrevolutionary forces,” and officially blamed for the most damaging policies of the past decade.

  We heard firecrackers going off and shouts coming from outside, and we raced into the street. There we joined thousands of Chinese celebrating. The Gang of Four’s arrest was the first reliable sign that China was indeed setting off in a new, more liberal direction. I felt as though I had been trapped in a cage, and now the door had been cracked open. I could dare to pick up decade-old dreams from where they sat collecting dust on the shelves of my mind, brush them off, and pursue them proudly once again.

  “The universities are going to reopen,” First Brother announced later that day, as the family crouched around our single stovetop for a simple dinner of noodles. Papa then told us with pride that he had been asked to teach economics and accounting at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and that he had been offered several jobs at companies that needed financial advisers.

  Shanghai Papa looked at me. “You should apply to university,” he said. “You are college student material, a bookworm.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “But how? How can I gain admission?”

  Papa smiled. “You are smart, Ping-Ping. You always have had a clever mind. Study hard. That is the only way to get in.”

  I gulped. “I can imagine nothing I would rather do.” I called to mind the mantra that Uncle W had given me years earlier: I am precious. I was determined to make up for lost time by sleeping less and working hard. Butterflies danced in my stomach, I was so nervous and excited at the same time. Yes, I would do it. I would find a way to go to school at long last.

  Sure enough, my Shanghai family was right. The Cultural Revolution had ended. All at once, college preparatory 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 every day. They opened their doors to the general public, and anyone who wanted to could teach or study at will, free of charge. Here was a nation of over nine hundred million people starved for education. Thousands of teachers who had been persecuted, abused, and sent down to the countryside for the past decade came back to the cities. Paid or not, they were eager to share their knowledge.

  I returned from Shanghai to Nanjing to live with Nanjing Mother and Hong in our dormitory room. Not long after that, Nanjing Father came home from exile. He looked dark and muscular, his face worn from years of exposure to the sun and open air. I learned that he had been chopping down trees and doing woodwork in the mountains along the snowy Russian border. Nanjing Father was an extreme introvert, and he spoke as few words as ever. But his mind had remained sharp. He returned to teaching aeronautical engineering at NUAA, and the university offered him a modest one-bedroom faculty apartment. Nanjing Mother took a job as the head of accounting at a large factory that made military vehicles.

  We moved out of dreaded Room 202. Hong and I shared a bed in the living room of our new place. I was delighted to have a desk with a lamp in the corner where I could study. I signed up for as many classes as I could fit into my schedule and studied day and night in a race against time. I quickly became known as “the girl who never turns off her lights.” How could I possibly sleep? My mind was hyperstimulated by everything I was learning: math, physics, chemistry, literature, history, geology, geography. I felt like a sponge trying to soak up the entire ocean.

  Nanjing Mother suggested that I study English. But I never imagined that I would need to learn a foreign language, and the only classes being offered were far from where we lived. Anyway, I didn’t see the point. “Even if you don’t learn your ABCs, you can still run machines,” I quipped, citing a well-known Chinese expression. Although I made many wise choices that year, I lived to regret not taking my mother’s ad
vice.

  Later in 1977, China held its first university entrance exams since 1966. Competition was fierce since no one had been able to get a higher education for the past ten years, and there were no more than a dozen colleges across the country open at the time. People of all ages, from eighteen to thirty, were eager to get in. I took the test in 1977, but did not pass the minimum scores required for acceptance. Disappointed but not discouraged, I studied nonstop, enduring long hours and sometimes fatgue. Then I tried again in July 1978. Participating in China’s college entrance examination in 1977 and 1978 was challenging and exciting. I was grateful to have the opportunity for formal education.

  I raced to view the public bulletin board where the results were posted a few months after the test. I had done it! My score was above the minimum required for acceptance. Although I had been asked to fill out a form listing my preferences, I had no choice of where or what I would study. Ultimately, the government would make the assignment. But I was in. Out of the fifty or so children who had been in my study groups and taken the exams, I was one of only two people who made it.

  I couldn’t believe it: I was going to be a college student! I pinched myself to be sure it wasn’t a dream and skipped home to tell my Nanjing parents and Hong. Although my Nanjing Father and Mother had always been reserved, they couldn’t help but grin when I shared the great news. “We knew you could do it, Ping-Ping!” they said, patting me on the back. I had never seen them more proud of me.

  I was not accepted to an aerospace engineering program, even though all my life I had dreamed of being an astronaut. When the acceptance letter came in the fall of 1978, it said that I had been assigned to study Chinese literature at Suzhou University. Suzhou was a second-tier school, not as highly regarded as Beijing University or NUAA. My birth parents’ faces fell when I told them.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go,” Nanjing Mother advised. “You can get in trouble so easily with a degree in literature. Wait half a year until you can take the entrance exam again. You may get into a science program.”

  But I didn’t want to take a chance on my future. What if something happened and the government changed its policy, shutting down the universities again next year? What if I scored lower and didn’t meet the minimum requirement to attend any program at any school? I was willing to accept any opportunity to pursue a formal education, even if it was less than optimal.

  Anyway, I was nineteen and ready to strike out on my own. It would be sheer bliss to study in a new city, unburdened by the duties of cooking and cleaning for my family and working in the factory. In Suzhou, I would live with other students in a dormitory. The university was only forty minutes by train to Shanghai, so I would be able to spend breaks with my Shanghai family.

  My decision was final: I would go.

  —

  I said my good-byes to my neighbors and colleagues. Ms. Lu, the teacher who had helped me so much by moving several bullies out of my study group years before, wept with joy when I told her. To my surprise, Wang, the former factory supervisor I’d become friends with, found me outside a night class one evening. “I heard from coworkers that you have been accepted to Suzhou University,” he said. “I wanted to see you before you left, to tell you in person how happy I am for you.” This time, I was the one who got misty eyed.

  On my final day in Nanjing, I went to buy a few special treats for dinner to celebrate with my family. Fong, the boy whose “concubine” I had been, had set up a makeshift stall at the gates of NUAA. In typical Chinese entrepreneurial fashion, he and his mother were making money hand over fist selling her homemade dumplings and watermelons from a nearby farm. But when I got to the gate, I found so many people pushing their way toward Fong’s stand that I couldn’t squeeze in. Luckily, he caught sight of me in the crowd.

  “I’ll bring some food to you, Ping,” Fong called out cheerfully. “Just go home.”

  I went back to our family’s apartment and waited there, expecting Fong to knock on the door shortly. But hours passed and I didn’t hear a sound. As dinnertime approached, I gave up hope, thinking he must have sold out of food or forgotten me. But when I glanced outside just to be sure, I discovered two big, ripe watermelons sitting on the ground by our front door. Next to them was a small pot whose lid had been left open a crack. The way the pot was positioned reminded me at once of that morning shortly after I had arrived in Nanjing, when I found two delicious steamed buns for Hong and me outside Room 202. Inside this pot, I discovered a dozen fresh, hot dumplings.

  I understood at once that Fong was the mysterious benefactor who had been providing Hong and me with food all those years. If anyone had ever found out that he, a red-blooded boy, had been helping black elements, he would have gotten into serious trouble. Surely that was why he had kept his identity a secret until now. But instead of telling me to my face, the gentle, shy teenager had simply placed the food at our door in such a way that I would know he was the one. An indescribable emotion flowed from my heart, fresh and sweet like watermelon juice, tickling my tongue as it flowed down my throat and into my stomach.

  When I look back on my childhood, I see that the shining spots of joy always resulted from random acts of kindness: Fong, my unknown benefactor, leaving a bit of food by my dorm room door; Uncle W sharing his wisdom and passion for Western literature; Wang’s encouragement and praise in my factory jobs. People’s openheartedness carried me through my darkest hours.

  { EIGHT }

  Life Is a Mountain Range

  PEAKS AND VALLEYS: 2006–2010

  SOME POPULAR SELF-HELP books and articles depict personal and professional success metaphorically in terms of summiting a mountain peak, implying that we climb only in an upward direction. But reality isn’t like that. It is more accurate to compare life to a mountain range. Sometimes we reach the top of a peak and then find ourselves unexpectedly tumbling back down into a valley again due to forces beyond our control. At other times, we ascend one peak, only to gain a view of many others all around us that we long to climb. In order to make it to the next mountaintop, we must first descend the one we are on. Either by choice or by circumstance, we find ourselves traveling up and down throughout our lives, traversing numerous peaks and valleys.

  As soon as the Inc. article naming me Entrepreneur of the Year hit the shelves in December 2005, I was inundated with calls and e-mails—from old friends and colleagues who had seen my picture on the cover and wanted to catch up, from strangers who had read my story and were interested in learning more about me, and from people around the world who were eager to book me for speaking engagements. Offers began to come in from corporations wanting to buy Geomagic. We were, admittedly, in a sweet spot to be acquired: we had achieved consistent revenue growth and profitability, yet we were still small enough to be attractive to a variety of buyers. We also had a fantastic brand reputation for creating high-quality and highly differentiated products.

  Some serial entrepreneur friends advised me to sell Geomagic and start over again. They themselves had gone on to successfully found multiple companies; doing start-ups was their area of expertise. I wondered if I should follow the same path. I had, after all, most enjoyed the early years at Geomagic, when the company had consisted of fewer than fifty employees. I knew everyone back then, and the decision-making process was quick and uncomplicated. People worked long hours and had fun together. We were like a big family. I saw clearly that it would not be easy for me to guide Geomagic forward, because most of what I had learned from starting the company would not apply to growing it. I would tumble into the valley of the unknown once again.

  I looked at a couple of offers that presented good cultural fits and market synergies—the companies were also in the 3D design space and their users would find Geomagic software appropriate. Yet ultimately, I was uninterested in making a sale for several reasons. First, it was too early. Geomagic had not yet realized the vision that I had set out to achieve on the
emerging space of 3D imaging and printing. I felt that I would let down some of our early investors, employees, customers, and partners. Second, I thrive on challenge. Taking the company to the next mountain peak excited me. Third, it seemed that most start-ups in our geographic area had sold early. I wanted Geomagic to stick around so that we could make a positive impact on the local entrepreneurial community. Last but not least, I didn’t have a personal exit plan. I wouldn’t know what to do without Geomagic, or what company to start next.

  I had made many choices throughout my life that had me trekking down one mountain so that I could summit the next. I did not follow conventional measures of success. Instead, I always chose to move closer to my passion, traveling up or down, because I found that both peaks and valleys afforded me the joy of new challenges and interesting life experiences. In my twenties, I abandoned my well-paid programming job with Lane Sharman’s start-up to join Bell Labs in an entry-level position because I wanted to work with innovators and attend graduate school. I later left my enjoyable and stable job at NCSA to found and run Geomagic. If I had pursued only a better title and bigger paycheck each step of the way, I definitely would not have ended up where I stood in early 2006: the founder and CEO of a global software company.

  When I told our board that I had decided not to sell right now and shared with them the reasons, Paul Rizzo of Franklin Street Partners whispered in my ear, “Ping, I just knew you would make the right decision.” I felt extremely grateful for the support that our first venture capital firm had given us over the past ten years. They had every right to push me to sell so that they could recap their investment sooner. When we later took on another VC investor, I realized just how lucky we had been with Franklin Street Partners. Their values aligned with ours; we both possessed a deep undercurrent of humanity. I could feel their pride in ownership of Geomagic. They were truly our partners.