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<div class="">June 28, 2013</div>
<h1>Cultural Revolution Vigilantes</h1>
<h6 class="">By
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<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/joenocera/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by JOE NOCERA"><span>JOE NOCERA</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
Even now, nearly six months later — during which time Amazon.com has
been flooded with hundreds of negative reviews condemning her; a Web
site was set up attacking her; and her friends and colleagues have been
bombarded with e-mails denouncing her — it is a little hard to
understand why Ping Fu’s memoir, “Bend, Not Break,” has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/world/asia/21iht-letter21.html">aroused such fury</a> in some quarters of the Chinese immigrant community. </p>
<p>
Fu, 54, came to America from China nearly 30 years ago. In 1997, she
founded a company, Geomagic, that was recently sold for $55 million. In
2005, Inc. magazine <a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/20051201/ping-fu.html">named her</a> entrepreneur of the year. On Saturday, she’ll be speaking at the American Library Association’s convention. </p>
<p>
In other words, Fu is the classic immigrant success story. You’d think
that would be a source of pride for Chinese immigrants. Instead, she has
been subjected to what they call in China a “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">human flesh search</a>” — an Internet vigilante campaign designed to bring shame on its target. </p>
<p>
Fu’s mistake — if you can call it that — was to include in her memoir scenes of growing up during the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/cultural-revolution">Cultural Revolution</a>,
China’s decade-long descent into madness. It was a period when people
were routinely denounced and punished (and sometimes killed) for the
crime of being an intellectual or teacher; when millions were sent to
the countryside for “re-education”; and when teenagers ran rampant as
“Red Guards” — all with the assent of Chairman Mao. It is impossible to
read about the Cultural Revolution without conjuring up “Lord of the
Flies.” </p>
<p>
Three decades later, there is almost no one in China willing to delve
into the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese government does not exactly
encourage discussion of the subject. It remains a deeply painful subject
to those who lived through it. </p>
<p>
When I spoke to Fu recently, she told me that she had originally wanted
to write a business memoir. But once she started writing, she realized
that to explain the woman she is today, she needed to write about the
girl she had been during the Cultural Revolution. A daughter of
privilege, she was taken from her family in Shanghai when she was 8 and
sent to live in a dormitory far away. She was raped by Red Guards when
she was 10, she writes. She worked in factories and had to raise her
younger sister. Although she says that she saw atrocities, she also
writes about kindnesses that were afforded her. (Disclosure: I am
currently writing a book for Portfolio, which published “Bend, Not
Break.”) </p>
<p>
In China, a blogger named Fang Zhouzi, well known for his Internet denunciation campaigns, decided to attack her. Quickly, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bend-Not-Break-Life-Worlds/dp/1591845521">Amazon was flooded</a>
with one-star reviews denouncing her as a liar. Her critics, most of
them Chinese immigrants, picked apart her story, and, though they found a
few real errors, most of their criticism was highly speculative. Yes,
they seemed to be saying, bad things happened during the Cultural
Revolution, but they couldn’t have happened to Ping Fu. </p>
<p>
“School was interrupted a bit, but there was still school,” sniffed
Cindy Hao, in attempting to refute Fu’s claim that she had worked in a
factory. Hao, a Chinese-born journalist who lives in Seattle, has become
one of Fu’s most vociferous critics. “Ping Fu made up her whole story,”
she told me. </p>
<p>
(Note: Hao, a freelance translator whom the Beijing bureau of The New York Times uses on occasion, helped report <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/world/asia/21iht-letter21.html">an article by Didi Kirsten Tatlow</a>.
She says that she became a critic only after that article was
published. She is no longer permitted to do reporting for the bureau.)
</p>
<p>
You can’t spend time talking to Hao and other critics without thinking
that the real issue here is not whether Fu’s book has errors, but rather
who gets to tell the story of the Cultural Revolution — or even whether
it should be told at all. Roderick MacFarquhar, an expert on the
Cultural Revolution who teaches at Harvard, told me that for anyone who
lived through it, the memories are ones they would prefer not to conjure
up. “If you were a teenager in China during the Cultural Revolution,
you were likely either being beaten up or were doing the beating. Either
way, it is humiliating to think about.” Yes, Ping Fu’s book has
mistakes in it. But it is hard to see how they justify the level of
extreme, unrelenting vilification she has suffered. Her real sin, it
appears, is that she stirred a pot most Chinese would prefer to leave
alone. </p>
<p>
In recent months, Hao tried to get Ping Fu disinvited from speaking at
the American Library Association convention. In one letter, she
described Fu as lacking “honesty, integrity and trustworthiness.”
</p>
<p>
>From where I’m sitting, it sounds a lot like the denunciations that were
so routine, and so awful, during the Cultural Revolution. </p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br>
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