History of Ping Fu
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Ping Fu’s difficult journey started at the tender age of 11 days old. Her mother sent her to be raised by her Aunt and Uncle. She remembers them as a kind and loving couple (inc.com). Although being placed with them would seemingly be the start of a better life; Moa Zedong’s cultural revolution would soon take her life in a different direction. She was torn away from her Aunt and Uncle and taken back to the city of Nanjing, the city of her birth. She was taken back just in time to see her birth mother and father taken away to a concentration camp, because they were condemned for being highly educated. Her father had been a professor and aerospace engineer, her mother a chief financial officer at a large corporation. Ping Fu was then sent with her sister to a dormitory where she was abused, raped and punished. She did not attend school during her time at the dormitory, but she did dream about the day she would be reunited with her mother, when she could be held by her mother, and loved the way a child should be. Years went by at the dormitory, where Fu presumably taught herself. While Fu had no formal education, she was able to pass as entrance exam into college, where she pursued a degree in Chinese literature. (fastcompany.com) Fu did research about China’s history of female infanticide, as a result of the one-child policy. The research caused an outrage, and Fu was put in prison. Although Fu thought she would be killed in prison, she was instead asked to leave China and never return. She was deported to America, where she continued her education, first at the University of New Mexico to study comparative literature, and then the University of Illinois where she earned a Masters degree in engineering.(brillanceofme.com) Even though in America Fu was accomplishing things she had long ago given up on, she couldn’t help but feel empty inside. She felt alone, and frozen inside. (inc.com) She eventually gained US citizenship and decided to return to China to confront her estranged mother. The reunion was anything but what Ping Fu had fantasized about. Her mother was abusive and violent with her after years of suffering and exile. Ping Fu was heartbroken, and demanded to know how her own mother could treat her so terribly. Unfortunately for Fu, the rest of the family sided with her mother. At that point something inside of Fu broke and she had enough. “For my whole life I lived for others. Now I realized that something must change. I had done everything that I could; now it was time to move on.” (inc.com) Fu returned home to America, and never looked back for her family. (inc.com) She returned to her studies at the University of Illinois where she met Professor Herbert Edelsbrunner. She gave his some advice for a trip he was planning to China, and he took her out to lunch when he returned to thank her. That was the beginning of their relationship, and they have been together ever since, starting Geomagic together, have gotten married and now have a daughter.