f**********r
发帖数: 18251 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: justinezeus (Justine), 信区: Military
标 题: 苏州大学浮萍新报料：孙中山抚养了我爷爷
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Wed Feb 13 10:05:07 2013, 美东)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/13/ping-fu-controversy
A successful US entrepreneur faces mounting questions over her widely lauded
tale of childhood torment in China's cultural revolution, as fresh
contradictions emerge and experts cast doubt on key elements of her story.
Ping Fu's rags-to-riches memoir Bend Not Break says she was torn away from
her parents at eight, brutally abused and sent to work in a factory; then
forced to leave China for the US after triggering international outcry over
female infanticide as a student. She went on to found software company
Geomagic, currently being acquired by 3D Systems.
Critics acknowledge the horrors of the cultural revolution, but question Fu'
s personal account. She has already conceded that a description of Red
Guards killing a teacher by tying their victim to four horses was an "
emotional memory" and probably wrong. Closer examination of her book and
interviews reveal numerous conflicting claims and experts told the Guardian
several parts of her story were implausible.
Fu, 54, said she was traumatised and hurt by the outcry, adding: "I don't
know who is behind this, but somebody is."
One of her most striking claims is that Sun Yat-sen, revered as the father
of modern China, "raised my grandfather and granduncle as his own sons" –
akin to a Briton being reared by Winston Churchill. Prof John Wong of the
University of Sydney, an expert on Sun's life, said he had no knowledge of
such wards.
Fu told the Guardian: "That was what I was told by my family before I left
China. I believe this is true. My mother says it's in history books." She
then added that Sun was attentive towards them, rather than actually
adopting them.
In a chapter of her book titled Factory Worker, Fu describes labouring in
factories for a decade, until schools reopened in 1976. She describes
working six hours a day, six days a week and told an interviewer she never
went to school in 10 years.
Experts on the cultural revolution told the Guardian schools mostly reopened
in 1968 or 1969 and that pupils had lessons in factories to learn skills,
but were not used as labour.
Fu said: "For 10 years I didn't have proper schooling. I was sent to study
in the factory, and sometimes in farms."
A photograph supplied to media by Fu herself shows her posing with a little
red book, Mao badge and armband. Michel Bonnin of Tsinghua University and
Prof Yin Hongbiao of Beijing University said it showed she was not disgraced
as a "black element" at the time, as she claimed; Fu said it was common for
children to be pictured pledging allegiance to Mao, "whether 'black' or '
red'".
Fu also says she was arrested and criticised by Suzhou University
authorities after Deng Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader, met student
publishers. She says Deng had seen a daring article from the popular
magazine she edited.
Perry Link, an expert on modern Chinese literature at the University of
California at Riverside, said student magazine representatives met in 1979,
but added: "I do not believe for a moment that Deng Xiaoping ever came near
the group."
Neither he nor others know of a representative from Fu's group Red Maple
attending. Fu said she believed the article was selected for This Generation
, the joint publication from the meeting, but Link's copy shows it is not
included.
Yinghong Cheng, now a professor of history at Delaware state university,
studied in the same time and in the same building at Suzhou as Fu, and had
his own literary group. He told the Guardian: "I am completely unaware of
that group [Red Maple] and publication, and if it had been that popular I
would have known about it."
Fu, who supplied a copy of her magazine, said her contemporaries might not
have heard of the society because it was underground. She said Deng met the
representatives at the same time as Communist Youth League leaders, noting
that she was told about the meeting and was not present.
The entrepreneur claims she was ordered to leave China after exposing female
infanticide in the early 80s, writing that in a few months of research she
"witnessed with her own eyes" drowned and suffocated female infants. Last
month she told a radio station she watched "hundreds of baby girls being
killed in front of my eyes. I saw girls being tossed into the river".
Therese Hesketh of University College London, an expert on population
controls in China, said: "I have never heard stories of this kind.
"Infanticide did of course occur, but was not commonplace … It certainly
was not done in public as even at that time to be caught meant a possible
murder charge."
Fu told the Guardian that she mis-spoke in the live radio interview and
should have said "my research was based on hundreds of cases, and I saw baby
girls killed right in front of my eyes".
She added: "If you went to the countryside and to the family planning unit
it was going on all the way down the line in every village and every school.
Very few people were allowed to go to the poor areas. These kinds of things
happened, and China doesn't want people to know it happened."
The entrepreneur once said Deng personally intervened to free her when she
was jailed due to the resulting outcry – a remarkable detail not mentioned
in her book.
Other questions include when Fu left China: she has said variously that it
was two weeks or over a year after her release.
Fu said she had been wrong to call the criticism a smear campaign, adding
she had realised the people she thought were attacking her were telling
their own stories of the cultural revolution.
"I hope that this will turn into a more civil discussion about what happened
and if any good can come from it I don't mind that people have turned their
anger towards me so long as we can heal together," she said.
Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Penguin's business imprint Portfolio, said: "
Ping Fu wrote in the Author's Note at the front of her book: 'I have tried
my best to remember and describe the events and people in my life. Mostly, I
have used real names, although some names have been altered to protect
privacy. Many details happened more than forty years ago and I've tried as
much as possible to verify the facts.'
"Sometimes, despite everyone's best efforts, minor mistakes appear in
nonfiction books. Whenever they are brought to an author's attention they
are corrected in future printings. Ping has already acknowledged several of
these, and if any additional corrections are required, of course those will
be made as well." |
|
