Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds
Ping Fu was eight years old when Mao's Red Guards took her from her family in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. She spent the next decade in labor camps, mass rallies, and dormitories with other children, subjected to violence and separation from everyone she knew. Bend, Not Break traces her survival, her expulsion from China after writing about female infanticide, and her arrival in the United States with almost no English. Fu went on to help commercialize the first web browser at NCSA, cofound Geomagic, and lead it to sale to 3D Systems. The memoir is structured around the image of bamboo, bending under storms without breaking, and reads as both a personal story and a reflection on leadership shaped by trauma. Simon Sinek has recommended it as an example of how character is forged.
What you might want to know about Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Tech entrepreneur Ping Fu tells the story of surviving Mao's Cultural Revolution as a child and building a 3D imaging company in the United States decades later.
Sinek has cited Bend, Not Break as one of the most powerful memoirs he has read about how adversity shapes leadership. He often points to Ping Fu as a model of resilience and to the book as a study in how leaders form their character under pressure.
It weaves both. The chapters alternate between her early years under the Cultural Revolution and her later career in American tech, with each half informing the other.
Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds was written by Ping Fu, published in 2012 by Portfolio.
Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds is 272 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
