Bend, Not Break: From Mao's China to the White House

'Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times'. Ping Fu is one of the few women running a tech company in the US. But her story begins long before. Born on the eve of China's Cultural Revolution, she was separated from her family at the age of eight. She grew up fighting hunger and humiliation and shielding her younger sister from the vindictive teenagers of Mao's Red Guard. At twenty-five she escaped to the United States; her only resources were $80 in traveller's checks and three phrases of English: Thank you,hello, and help. Yet Ping persevered. Within a year she had completed her English qualifications and started studying computer programming, rising to run the team behind Netscape. She then founded Geomagic, a company that has literally reshaped the world, from personalizing prosthetic limbs to repairing NASA spaceships. Bend, Not Break tells the incredible personal story of a journey from imprisonment to freedom, from Mao's China to technology start-ups.
It is a tribute to one woman's courage in the face of cruelty, and a valuable lesson on the enduring power of resilience.