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    Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds
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    Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds
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    Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds
    Audiobook10 hours

    Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds

    Written by Ping Fu and Mei Mei Fox

    Narrated by Robin Miles

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times. . . . Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. Take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly."

    -Ping Fu's "Shanghai Papa"

    Ping Fu knows what it's like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student.

    Ping Fu also knows what it's like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year. To be a friend and mentor to some of the best-known names in tech­nology. To build some of the coolest new products in the world. To give speeches that inspire huge crowds. To meet and advise the president of the United States.

    It sounds too unbelievable for fiction, but this is the true story of a life in two worlds.

    Born on the eve of China's Cultural Revolution, Ping was separated from her family at the age of eight. She grew up fighting hunger and humiliation and shielding her younger sister from the teenagers in Mao's Red Guard. At twenty-five, she found her way to the United States; her only resources were $80 in traveler's checks and three phrases of English: thank you, hello, and help.

    Yet Ping persevered, and the hard-won lessons of her childhood guided her to success in her new home­land. Aided by her well-honed survival instincts, a few good friends, and the kindness of strangers, she grew into someone she never thought she'd be-a strong, independent, entrepreneurial leader. A love of problem solving led her to computer science, and Ping became part of the team that created NCSA Mosaic, which became Netscape, the Web browser that forever changed how we access information. She then started a company, Geomagic, that has literally reshaped the world, from personalizing prosthetic limbs to repair­ing NASA spaceships.

    Bend, Not Break depicts a journey from imprisonment to freedom, and from the dogmatic anticapitalism of Mao's China to the high-stakes, take-no-prisoners world of technology start-ups in the United States. It is a tribute to one woman's courage in the face of cruelty and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateDec 31, 2012
    ISBN9781101604984
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Bend, Not Break

    3.5/5

    92 ratings37 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Ping Fu is the incredibly successful founder and CEO of Geomagic, Inc. She's been Entrepreneur of the Year in Time Magazine and met President Barack Obama. But she also spent her childhood living in a furniture-less dorm with her little sister during Mao's Cultural Revolution in China. She's been beaten and raped simply because her family was well-to-do and educated. She was thrust into a role of responsibility at a very young age, punished constantly, and finally deported from her native country with no ability to speak English and no idea what to do with her life. Her story is one of contrasts and success against all the odds.A couple of years ago I read quite a few books featuring the Cultural Revolution. China is a fascinating country that is completely outside my own experience. Ping Fu's book Bend, Not Break promised to combine this history with the story of a woman living the American dream.Ping's story is a true testament to the power of her own will and ability to seize opportunities as they come. She is beaten down regularly from a very young age, but she's also determined to make something of herself. She never lets her experiences truly box her in, and as soon as she's given the opportunity at a Chinese university, she straight away starts trying to make a difference. It's no surprise that when she lands in the United States speaking little more than "hello" and "thank you" that she immediately begins to make something of herself. She learns English quickly, enrolls in a good university, and begins waitressing to pay the bills.This was a surprisingly inspiring book which shows how far you can go simply on the basis of trying very hard. The author is very clear that things were challenging for her; she loved software development, which she eventually made her career, but she only loved parts of it, and it's those parts that she focused on to become a success. She struggles with being a CEO in particular; in a world dominated by tall white men, she feels out of place, and for a time believes that she needs a handsome, charming tall white guy to make her business successful (this is one case where she's wrong). She's not afraid to admit when she's wrong or where she has a disadvantage and she always does her best to surmount it.Since finishing this book, I've read some very critical articles online which state that many of the events in the book aren't quite true. Like most memoirs, parts of the book simply have to be imagined. I doubt anyone can remember an exact quote from their mother from the age of eight (I certainly can't). There are claims that she was as thoroughly a Red Guard as the other children, and that deportation was a crime reserved for more severe offenses, mostly by other Chinese people. This has made it difficult for me to recommend the book, but having read previously about how difficult the Cultural Revolution was, I choose to believe the author's story. I think that's a decision every reader will have to make.
    • 5/5
      I can't recommend this book too highly. Very readable, extraordinary life story. Apparently, she had a difficult time sharing the details of her life as an introvert and due to the horrific experiences she suffered. Very life affirming.
    • 3/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Ping Fu wrote a brief memoir (276 pages) of her "life in two worlds" in part to explain and claim her identifying both with the China of her birth, and the U.S.A. of her choice. Her life is quite hard to believe and yet I think I do believe it. Bend, Not Break is her book."Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance." This was some advice Ping received from her "Shanghai Papa" when she was very young and advice she follows through the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" and through working in factories and through Chinese university education, and police stations. Whew. That there would be one life enough for me and yet adapt she did, and then for reasons not entirely clear she is "invited" to leave China and through some family contacts is accepted as a student of English as A Second Language at the University of New Mexico. And she there begins a second life.I've had the pleasure of living in a country where I knew very very little of the language spoken, and had no aptitude to learn it! Ping, on the other hand, takes to learning English, and then computer programming like a gifted learner. Her life in the USA is less fascinating to me as I'm not very interested in the dot com world nor in the world of entrepreneurs and successful corporate CEOs; but dang! This young Chinese woman was interested, and became passionate and the next thing you know she is highly successful. The writing is not remarkable but the story is and so I do recommend the book. There were places where I reacted with "no, I can't believe that" but on balance I'll have to confess I do think she is writing a true story and it is worth reading and thinking about.
    • 3/5
      This intriguing autobiography traces the life of Ping Fu, whose formative years in China were shaped by the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, through her emigration to the United States, where she founded 3D software company Geomagic. Easy to read and difficult to put down, this would be a great assignment for teens as an "issues" non-fiction title. It would make an intriguing project to read "Bend, Not Break" after "The Hunger Games," whose heroine, we sense, may never fully recover from her ordeal. In contrast, Ping Fu experienced some of the same traumas in real life, and overcame the profound effects of this abuse to define her own future. Also intensely interesting for discussion is the extreme backlash her memoir prompted, as voices from China attempt to discredit her description of life during the Cultural Revolution.Recommended - rated T for mature teens, due to descriptions of psychological and physical abuse.
    • 5/5
      Ping Fu is my new hero. No one can read this book and not be encouraged to try harder, be better, love your fellow man more. There are no excuses. I want to thank her for revealing herself to us and sharing her feelings so honestly.
    • 5/5
      Wow what a person and wow what a read. The book tracks the life of one amazing person who should be an inspiration to us all. The author battled against all the odds to get to America, start a new life and became great.
    • 5/5
      I very much enjoyed this book. It is interesting, well written, and contained many lessons that resonated with me as I was reading it. The metaphor of the bamboo bending, but not breaking, was very appropriate and worked seamlessly with the content of the book.Thank you, Early Reviewers, for finally sending me a good book!
    • 5/5
      Very inspiring and acknowledging. Wish many successes to Geo Magic:)
    • 4/5
      This is a fascinating book, and I found it very inspiring. While it's sometimes a bit jarring when the story goes back and forth in time, I found the author's story to be so interesting. I have read other books by people who survived the Cultural Revolution, and her story, because she was so young at the time, was another perspective I liked reading. I really liked the author's voice in this book --- she's a person I would probably be a little intimidated by in person, but I think that's because I'm so impressed by all that she's been able to accomplish thus far in her life. Really an inspiring book ---- I'm grateful I received it through Early Reviewers, and I've also been recommending it to some of the patrons at my library.
    • 4/5
      Ping's story is an inspiration. From life in communist China to starting a business in America, she lays out all the struggles she faced along the way, while somehow managing to keep a positive and uplifting look on life. She gives a valuable perspective and advice as a women in business, but also insight on life and goals in general. She is a true survivor and I highly recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      Ping Fu has had an incredible and challenging life and it is amazing what she has accomplished despite it all. This book tells Ping's story from being born in China and being subjected to abuse during the cultural revolution to her exile to the United States and becoming a highly successful entrepreneur. Ping's story is captivating and engrossing. It is hard to believe how resilient she is. Resilience is the theme behind her struggles as indicated in the title, Bend, not Break, which comes from a Chinese saying passed on to her by her father. The book is written in chapters alternating between her youth in China and more recent years in the United States. The flow is nice and allowed for changes in time without being confusing or disjointed. I highly recommend this book for those looking for an encouraging story of triumph and success.
    • 4/5
      The story of Ping Fu's life as told in her biography Bend, Not Break A Life in Two Worlds, is an eye opening account of what it was like growing up black-blooded during China's cultural revolution. The story is told in the increasingly popular fashion of toggling back and forth between her childhood in China and her adulthood as an American immigrant. Parts of the current day sections read more like a business book which, being an entrepreneur myself, I enjoyed. As a whole, her story is very interesting. There were more than a few times I was prompted to read sections aloud to my husband, then put the book down and ponder what I'd just read. Ping's story of is one of not only survival but achievement. It's a story worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Ping Fu's life as recounted here in her memoir is almost unbelivable - and yet, as someone who's read other Chinese memoirs of the same period (Wild Swans as the most obvious comparison) such things really happened. Her honesty in sharing her childhood experiences is definitely commendable. That said, I think like other other reviewers I found her business struggles (particularly when placed in direct comparison to her childhood) less compelling, if still rather frank about her own personal mistakes. I'll probably still recommend it to other people I'd know who'd be interested in both sides of the story because of their business interests.
    • 3/5
      Bend, Not Break tells Ping Fu's story as a child growing up in Mao's cultural revolution and how she ends up as a successful CEO in America. The book jumps back and forth in time, which I believe was necessary to break up the mostly dull story of her life in America. Those sections were too much like a how to succeed in business manual. The parts about her life in China,however, we're riveting. I only wish the book had more to do with China, and less to do with her company.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed reading this memoir and it was definitely interesting to read about Ping Fu's experiences. She had an extremely rough and traumatic childhood but managed to become CEO of GeoMagic. Despite this, I found the style of writing to be off-putting. At times it seems kind of simple and unpolished. Although she maintains a positive outlook throughout the book, it seems that she is describing very traumatic events in an unemotional way. Not sure if this is from the fact that it was ghost-written, or just the author's particular style. The story line jumped around which I found confusing at times. Although I enjoyed the juxtaposition of her life in China and periods of her life in America, at times they didn't correlate well and it was strange to have it going from one to the other. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and learned quite a bit about a time period and culture with which I have no previous experience. Ping Fu is a strong woman and overcame quite a lot to become the woman she now is. I admire her triumph in the face of adversity.
    • 4/5
      This was a very interesting read and I particularly liked the way the author moved back and forth between her childhood in China and her personal and professional life in the U.S. She made some interesting observations in contrasting the two cultures...in China there is little free speech, but many people are free thinkers -- in the U.S. where there is free speech, she "was surprised by how limited people's thinking could be...Americans had a very narrow view of life, even though their society was so much more open...". She goes on to note that while government propaganda is rampant in China, it is more subtle in America and comes more from media and advertisers than directly from the government. Her thoughts on entrepreneurship, innovation, and globalization were also noteworthy. I would highly recommend this book to others, particularly to those with great ideas who need a push to pursue their dreams.
    • 4/5
      Bend, Not Break is an interesting book about the life of a poor Chinese child, beaten and abused only because she is educated. It was fascinating to see how she pulled herself up by the bootstraps after her arrival in the US. Should be required reading in grade schools, a perfect model to show kids that it's not where they come from. . . but who they CHOOSE to become that matters.
    • 2/5
      I found the story of Ping Fu's early years in China to be interesting and heart wrenching if true. Being forced at 8 years old to leave her parents and raise her younger sister and the treatment she faced growing up in China was difficult to read about . I wondered if neighbors really did not help the children more. The fact that she remained optimistic after all that she went through speaks well of her. Her immigration to the USA and subsequent education and founding of a software company was interesting to read about, but got bogged down a bit in the details. She is very proud of her accomplishments but I would have enjoyed the book more if it was written in chronological order instead of bouncing back and forth and it if remained focused on her life instead of her work. Some of the information did seem bit far fetched. I received this book as an Early Reader in exchange for my review.
    • 3/5
      This book was an attempt to explain two influences on the author and how they helped shape her life. One of these influences was growing up in China and I would give this part of the book 5/5 stars if possible. I found it riveting and informative on what life in China was really like during the cultural revolution. The other major influence was her American business career. I would give this part of the book zero stars mostly because I really did not care to know about the day to day details of her company, I would have preferred to skip that part if I could have. Because of both of these main influences on the story, I feel the book as whole averages out to 2.5/5 stars.
    • 4/5
      I tend to be very skeptical about memoirs, but I was very pleasantly surprised with Bend, Not Break. Ping Fu's unvarnished description of her successes and failures, tragedies and joys made her seem very likeable and "real." I did not know much about life in China during the Cultural Revolution, and Fu's incredibly difficult childhood makes her current success that much more admirable. While I did not find the sections on her work as a businesswoman and entrepreneur to be as engaging as the stories about her past, I do think they would be valuable to those currently in business: there are lessons there that many in business could stand to learn. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would be interested to hear what Ping Fu does in the future.
    • 5/5
      Have you ever read a memoir and instantly wanted to be the persons friend? That was how I felt before I ever got through the first chapter. Fu has a way with words that I am most impressed with, especially since finding the right ones to describe your personal life are so hard to come by. She is an inspiration and truly a model citizen we should aspire to be in some way. This goes on my shelf of favorites.
    • 4/5
      I believe this is the best memoir I have ever read! It is so packed with history and emotion! I couldn't put it down. Ms. Fu's life is amazing! Once in America, life didn't begin as easy as one would imagine. She worked hard to become who she is today and what an amazing journey! She is a true heroine and role-model, especially for females!.
    • 5/5
      I very much enjoyed this book. It is interesting, well written, and contained many lessons that resonated with me as I was reading it. The metaphor of the bamboo bending, but not breaking, was very appropriate and worked seamlessly with the content of the book.Thank you, Early Reviewers, for finally sending me a good book!
    • 1/5
      There's two sides to this book. On one hand this is story of a woman who spent part of her childhood in luxury, another part of childhood in prison, and eventually came to America where she found success. On the other hand a lot of people believe that Ping Fu made this story up. I don't know enough about China's history to agree or disagree with any of these claims. The accusations ruined the book for me. I couldn't get into the story without the thought that it was made up pulling at me.
    • 5/5
      I requested this book because I enjoy anything about the history of China. I really loved this book. I read it in one day. Yes it is that good! It is the story of Ping's life from her humble beginnings in China to her success as a business entrepreneur in a world of men. The book sweeps you along on a journey of her life. She takes you through the trials and tribulations that made her who she is.She takes you back and forth in time. The transitions are logical and weave the book together seamlessly. She reveals her philosophy about life and how to deal with people. It is well written. It is a memoir of Ping's life. Ping is a true inspiration and a strong role model for women of today's world. Ping is an incredible woman. I agree this is one of the best books that I have read and I plan to share it with all of my friends and family. If you are thinking of buying it or reading it, go ahead. Just do it!
    • 5/5
      When I first threw my name in the ER hat for this book, I was mostly just intrigued by the fact that the author would be relating stories of what it was like to grow up during the Communist Revolution in China. And when I started to read it, those memories jumped off the page in an incredibly vivid way, as Ping Fu relates how she was separated from her loving family in Shanghai and sent to live in a tenement for orphans of the revolution in Nanjing. The large struggles and small triumphs that she describes were heartbreaking and incredibly moving. However, those memories are only half of the book. Ping Fu spends an equal portion of the book sharing her experiences of life in America, starting in the early 80's when she was exiled from China for writing things that reflected poorly on the Communist government. In contrast to her early life in China, her life in America seems to have been surprisingly fortunate, if not always easy. She has shown a great talent for using setbacks and difficult situations as springboards to propel her to even greater success. Overall, I thought the book was very good, and I was not put off by the way it jumped around chronologically, as such shifts were always clearly labelled and easily differentiated. I was always impressed by Ping's willingness to accept responsibility, ask for help, and then move forward (although not always in the same direction).
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      I'm really, really glad I read Bend Not Break by Ping Fu. Not because it's wonderfully written. The prose is pretty plain vanilla. She wrote this memoir with a Huffington Post journalist named Mei Mei Fox, and there's definitely a journalistic flavor to it. Some will be put off a bit, I imagine, by the jumping back and forth in time that occurs, but it worked fine for me. What makes this book stand out so dramatically is the story it tells and the woman Ping Fu is. This was an ER book, and as usual I didn't really know what I was getting. This is an example of why getting involved with the early reviewer books program is worthwhile. The following probably has some spoilers, even though this is a memoir.Ping Fu began life as the child of somewhat wealthy intellectuals in pre-Mao Shanghai, China. Turns out she had two sets of parents, and the ones who loved and adored her weren't her biological ones. Her loving "Shanghai Papa" (as opposed to her barely present Nanjing Papa) taught her Taoism, and that ended up affecting her entire, remarkable life. "Taoists understand that there can be no summer without winter, no ups without downs, no growth without decay. Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. When you are like the three friends of winter, you take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, but always staying calm inwardly." One of the the three friends of winter is bamboo - "flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times."That Taoist principle will be sorely tested, and exemplified, by Ping's life. Mao comes into power, and suddenly it is a very bad thing to be the daughter of somewhat wealthy intellectuals. She is "black", as opposed to the desirable red of children of unprivileged workers. She's wrenched by the Red Guard from her home and parents at age 10 or so with her younger sister, and sent to a reeducation center where she is physically and sexually abused, degraded and forced to denounce her parents, herself and her former life. She also is left alone to take care of her sister. "In the course of one day I had not only lost the mother I loved and the mother who had given birth to me; I had also become a mother myself."The ten years of Mao's Cultural Revolution "would prove to be the darkest period in Chinese history: thirty-six million people were persecuted, and three million were killed or maimed." It's painful to read about Ping's life during this time, but various people find ways to help her. As her and sister Hong's hunger increases, a pot of delicious food mysteriously appears on their "Room 202" doorstep, an occurrence that will be repeated on the darkest days. Late in life she finds out who their benefactor was. Just when she thinks she can't take any more from the abusive Red Guard, a light-hearted Red girl named Li befriends and protects her. Eventually Mao dies, and some freedoms and chances to study at school return. Ping hungrily (this time for knowledge) dives into studying and reading anything she can get her hands on. She's a good writer, and helps put out a school newspaper. Ironically, one piece she writes is perceived as unacceptably anti-government (I won't say what it's about, but it's a familiar and horrifying aspect of China that, at that time, that no one spoke openly of). "When I was twenty-five years old, the Chinese government quietly deported me."She hadn't expected this, and arrives in the U.S. speaking only three words of English, with $80 for a flight to Albuquerque from San Francisco, where there is supposed to be a family acquaintance. She is quickly helped by one kind man. Then, after there is no family acquaintance to greet her, she is taken advantage of by another, who locks her in his house to take care of his kids because his wife has left him. Welcome to America, Ping.Resilient, resilient, resilient. She does housekeeping jobs, she waitresses, she learns some English, she manages to go back to school at the University of New Mexico. When she finds huge gaps in her education because of her Mao-life, she educates herself, most notably in math from the ground up. Her laughably bad English improves. She finds she has a knack for computer science. She ends up working at Bell Labs and then The National Center for Super Computing Applications. "Taking on what were dubbed the 'grand challenges of science', we worked on analyzing the folding of proteins, mapping the human genome, predicting earthquakes, and revealing the nuances of quantum mechanics. Every day I had fun, was challenged, and felt happy."So that's enough, right? What a story? But wait, there's more. Eventually she decides in the 90s to start up her own company, called Geomagic. "Running a start-up is not for the faint of heart." She quotes the founder of LinkedIn: "You jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down." She finds running the company much less self-centered than her previous existence: "{When I started running Geomagic, I found myself working for many others: employers, investors, and customers. It reminded me of motherhood; both are serious, long-term commitments. People often say that a woman fully matures when she becomes a mother, and I believe there is some truth to that statement. The first time I heard my baby crying in the night, I woke up and realized that, from now on, I would always put this little creature's well-being before my own. Being an entrepreneur pushed me even further in terms of what I thought I could do and how much I could care."The descriptions of her business experience are fascinating. Geomagic was and is engaged in the creation of what Ping calls "personal factories", 3d modelling that allows customized product creations - shoes, braces for teeth, clothing, you name it. "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 jeans that don't fit their curves." When she shows up for her first trade conference for tech industry CEOs, she's initially turned away because it's assumed she must be a spouse. At the conference she's the only woman, and has no idea how to network with the men there. She goes on to make major mistakes in running the company, and it almost goes under, but she manages to save it. And then to make it thrive. In 2005 a major magazine honors her as Entrepreneur of the Year. She is sought everywhere as a speaker.If this were a novel, I would have been shaking my head at the disbelief the author was asking us to suspend. But it's a true story, an amazing story. An introvert, Ping had resisted writing it. "Eventually, I became reconciled to the idea that others might find inspiration in my story. I write today not because of what I have become but because of the nobody I once was. I write because I wrote many pages long ago, more than these, in secret and at night, and they were burned in front of my eyes. I write because I am fortunate enough to have lived a life that I never could have imagined possible, and sharing the tale of how I got there seems to be the generous thing to do." I found it very moving, and am thankful I was given this chance to read it.
    • 4/5
      I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program and can say with certainty that it is my favorite Early Reviewer book thus far! It's an enjoyable, intense, enlightening, and humble story spanning from China's Cultural Revolution to entrepreneurship. Ping Fu's personal story is pretty amazing, and this book is an engrossing read.