by Ping Fu
—
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 rarely ever talked to them about personal matters anyway, and I figured that in this case, the less they knew, the less the government would bother them.
“I want to leave university, claiming a nervous breakdown,” I declared. My parents didn’t question the decision; Uncle W had shared with them the advice he’d given me during the Red Maple Society scandal two years earlier. 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.
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. Nanjing Mother and Father were thrilled that I would have a chance to start a new life and get a graduate degree in the United States.
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 felt a deep sense of relief that I had a chance at a future, even if that future was unknown. Exile was, in my opinion, a far preferable fate to being sentenced to a hard-labor camp in Chinese Siberia. I was happy to know that my family had begun to make arrangements for me to live overseas. 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.
It took more than six months to apply for admission as an overseas student. I applied in many countries but heard back first from the United States. With my college admission in hand, I went to check on the status of my passport.
As I stood in the police station corridor wondering whom I could possibly ask for help, I was blessed with another stroke of good fortune. A beautiful young policewoman with a compassionate smile appeared and explained that she was in charge of my case. She called me into her office to talk about my situation. I don’t know why—perhaps her warmth reminded me of Shanghai Mama—but I opened my heart to her. I told the story of the Red Maple Society’s controversial magazine article, and about how my research on the killing of baby girls had gotten me into even more trouble. I had never intended to do any damage to my country, I said; on the contrary, I had only wanted to help.
The policewoman listened closely, tilting her head to one side. When I described what I had seen in the countryside as I conducted my thesis research—babies discarded in garbage cans and tossed into lakes—tears formed in the corner of her eyes. She had gotten married recently and was expecting, she told me. It pained her deeply to hear my stories. “If you are willing to risk your life to save baby girls,” she said, “the least I can do is help save yours.”
A few months 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 recommend that your passport be 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.”
While I waited for my passport, I followed the news with special interest. In 1982, the world was watching the implementation of China’s one-child policy. A Shanghai newspaper called for an end to gender discrimination. Later that year and in the following year, the Chinese Communist Party made strong statements opposing female infanticide. China’s national paper, The People’s Daily in Beijing, acknowledged that peasants were killing baby girls. The news spread to the international press, who used this acknowledgment as evidence of China’s violations of human rights. Theodore W. Shultz, a Nobel Laureate in economics and adviser to the United Nations, denounced a proposed UN award to the Chinese Minister of Family Planning, Qian Xinzhong, saying China’s one-child policy had caused a large increase in female infanticide. No wonder my thesis research had gotten me in trouble.
Then, in July 1983, my mother received a letter from a college best friend who had immigrated to America. Her friend’s father, Li Mo’an, was a high-ranking military general in the Chinese National Party. My mother knew him well, and they met again when he visited China in October 1981. So she decided to write to Mr. Li and ask him to use whatever influence he had to help me leave China.
My passport was issued on August 27, 1983 by the Public Security Bureau of Jiangsu Province. I traveled to Shanghai, where I was able to apply for a U.S. student visa at the American consulate without difficulty other than a few months waiting time. The only hurdle that remained was finding enough money to purchase my plane ticket to the United States. I gathered my entire savings from my paid work and the sale of most of my personal items and exchanged the Chinese money for an eighty-dollar cashier’s check in U.S. dollars from China Bank in return. 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 the purchase for me.
“Where did you get the money?” I asked, eyes wide.
Mother lowered her voice and explained, “An old business partner owed your grandpa some money a long time ago. He recently settled his debts, and I got enough money to buy you a ticket. Don’t worry about it.”
I wanted to hug her with appreciation, but my feet wouldn’t move; it didn’t feel natural. I simply bowed my head.
—
Knowing that these were my last days in China, various family members began cramming my head with wisps of stories about my lineage. I learned sketchy details about Shanghai Papa’s father, an illustrious business owner who had founded a bank and taken a second wife, who was not Papa’s birth mother. 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 mod
ern China. Dr. Sun had cared for my grandfather and grand-uncle as his own sons. Then, after the Chinese Civil War, my grandfather and his family had fled the Communists with the Nationalist Party to Taiwan. Nanjing Father ran away from his family somewhere along the escape route, choosing instead to remain in China. During the Cultural Revolution, Nanjing Father had been accused of serving as a spy and special agent for the Nationalists. No wonder I had been punished all my life. I was not only black; I was pitch-black.
There were few telephones in China in those days, but mail service was reliable. Still, I didn’t know whether I would ever see my family and friends again, and I started to feel the weight of leaving. Due to the politically sensitive nature of my circumstances, I was unable to tell any of my classmates, including Jin Lin, that I was leaving China forever.
Into a tattered bag, I packed my small collection of rainflower stones, what few clothes I owned, and an English dictionary Nanjing Father had given me. The day before my departure, Nanjing Mother gave me a scrapbook she had made, which I had never seen before. It included photographs of her wedding to my father, her pregnancy with me, our family portrait, and a few of my baby pictures.
I bid my family farewell at the Shanghai International Airport and departed China on January 14, 1984. A few hours into the flight, it suddenly hit me that this was my first time on a plane, and that I was traveling halfway across the earth. I was the girl who had wanted to fly and live on the moon, the teenager who had longed for the same freedom that the characters in my favorite novels had enjoyed. Was this exile not, in many ways, the realization of my dreams? I took a deep breath, and much of my anxiety vanished.
I thought of a different parting, seventeen years earlier, when Red Guards had taken me from Shanghai Mama. Like a mountain range, I realized, life offers surprising views at every turn. Although the best views can be found on the peaks, it is the valleys that offer the most opportunities for growth and development. In valleys we farm, build roads, and formulate our visions for reaching ever higher. In valleys, we develop resilience and cultivate hope.
{ EPILOGUE }
The World Isn’t Flat; It’s 3D
In March 2006, shortly after I was named Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat rose to the top of the international bestseller lists. I was asked to give the closing keynote for the Inc. 500 Conference, celebrating the five hundred fastest-growing private companies in America. Friedman would be delivering the opening keynote.
During his talk, Friedman explained his theory that globalization has occurred in three phases. First, countries invaded other countries. Next, companies invaded other countries. Now, in the early twenty-first century, we were being personally invaded by global commerce. Thanks to the proliferation of computers and fiber-optic cable, multinational companies with global supply chains were making geographic divisions increasingly irrelevant. Friedman cited the simultaneous rise of India and China as examples of the leveling of the economic playing field—hence the emergence of a world that is flat.
Friedman’s speech was insightful and entertaining. Mine was on an entirely different subject: I was to share my personal story about my journey from China to the United States, from a nobody to somebody, and how that experience influenced my leadership style at Geomagic. Yet when I took the stage, I couldn’t resist spontaneously opening with the statement “The world isn’t flat; it’s 3D.” This remark elicited a large burst of laughter and applause from the audience.
I was throwing in a little humor to engage the audience, but also I genuinely believed what I said to be true. The last thing I would ever claim to be is an expert in international trade, let alone economic policy. Yet in my opinion, it is possible to interrupt the cycle of painful and often shortsighted outsourcing that many people still accept as the inevitable outcome of globalization. Instead, we will move increasingly toward a modern version of localization, with local production marked by global interconnectedness and accessibility.
I marvel at the environmental and financial inefficiency of shipping millions of identical products or parts across the world. Today, we shop at Walmart, where most of the goods sold are made cheaply in China but carry no connection to the country or its culture. At the same time, my home state of North Carolina—once famous for its textile mills, woodworkers, and a whole village of potters—has been hit hard by this trend, losing jobs, industries, and heritage. I remember a day when Xixi was young and we visited Ben Owen, a master potter from Randolph County. He picked her up and sat her on his lap at the pottery wheel, guiding her hands to mold a lump of clay. These potters survived the industrial revolution, but now globalization is threatening to render their traditional handicraft obsolete. Unless, that is, technology not only preserves but also extends art into everything we make.
At Geomagic, we are passionate about the intersection of handcraftsmanship and technology, art and science, humanity and business. We believe that innovation can enable abundance in the future rather than scarcity—my original vision of a “personal factory” scaled up to a global system. I believe locally made, high-quality products that leverage technology can help make manufacturing in the United States efficient and price competitive once again. Businesses should be measured by more than mere numbers; they should strive to be good global and local citizens. We can start building sustainable business by creating socially responsible ecosystems. Common sense tells us that it is more efficient to build innovative products in our home countries. We should make more goods that people really want and need, and less stuff that people don’t care about.
Humans are anything but one-size-fits-all; each of our bodies is unique, as are our tastes and styles. At Geomagic, we envision the day when individuals are invited to participate in the creation of products that have meaning for them on a fundamental level. With personal factories, there is no need to maintain a huge inventory; no costs or environmental degradation for shipping goods halfway across the earth by sea, rail, or air; no huge retail shops demanded for displaying wares; and far less waste from making products that nobody wants. Companies no longer need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising fifty brands of shoes, many of which never sell, and consumers don’t have to repeatedly waste time and become frustrated trying on dozens of jeans that don’t fit their curves.
I have seen it happen already. Invisalign offered the first example of this paradigm shift in action: Geomagic has contributed to the mass customization of aligners to straighten teeth. Since 2009, it has also powered the creation of Bespoke prosthetics. Scott Summit was intrigued by a proposition that a friend put to him: While prosthetic limbs had come a long way in terms of mobility, comfort, and materials, they still created stigma for those using them. Could Scott, an industrial designer, find a way to make the devices more uniquely personal, while still keeping the process affordable? “I wanted to make people who had lost limbs feel beautiful again,” Scott said.
In partnership with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kenneth Trauner, Scott founded Bespoke Innovations. The team started to research ways to deliver a more customizable experience to patients with prosthetic limbs, and soon came across Geomagic. Today, Geomagic software enables Bespoke to manufacture customized prosthetic limbs, affording a great deal of individual expression. One woman wanted to wear cocktail-length dresses to evening parties and concerts without attracting undue attention to her prosthetic leg. Scott and his team developed a fairing that resembled fishnet stockings, which she could match on her other leg. Another patient, who had lost a favorite tattoo along with his leg, had the design etched into the leather of his prosthetic leg.
In just a few years, shoes will be made to perfectly fit the shape of our feet, chairs will be molded to provide optimal support for our backs, and artificial heart valves will be modeled on our own. With global accessibility through Internet technology, small companies and individuals will be able to make their unique local prod
ucts, while also offering them on the global stage with pride and authenticity. Just as the democratization of the publishing industry opened mass communication for individual bloggers to offer their opinions to everyone, so, too, will the democratization of the manufacturing industry pave the way for people to enjoy and share personalized products and experiences across the globe.
—
During the summer of 2006, as Geomagic was expanding into China and the excitement from the Inc. magazine cover story about me was settling, I received an unexpected phone call. “Your middle school classmate is on the line,” the Geomagic receptionist told me.
“Middle school?” I asked aloud, wondering who would make such a claim in order to reach me. Puzzled, I took the call.
I hadn’t heard the voice on the other end of the line in thirty years. It was Winston, a leader of my study group and the son of a high-ranking Red Army officer. He had once slammed a door in my face and had shamed me on occasions by calling me “a stinky black element.” Winston said that he had seen my picture on the cover of Inc. He was pulling together a reunion of our study group as we were before we had all gone different ways at the end of the Cultural Revolution, and he wanted me to come to Nanjing to join in. Everyone wanted to get together, he said, and I would add a lot to the reunion. He also assured me that Zhang would not be invited.
“So you call that a middle school reunion?” I asked with a hint of sarcasm.
Winston chuckled. “What else would you call it?”
Curiosity and a newfound desire to confront the ghosts of my past piqued my interest. I decided to go.
Thirty years to the day since our study group had last sung “The East Is Red,” I walked into a Nanjing restaurant for a gathering of former red leaders and black elements—the abused and their abusers. When I first entered the private banquet room, I couldn’t recognize most of the people there or recall their names. Feeling alienated, I leaned uncomfortably against a wall, wondering where to sit.