She was Andreessen's boss as he developed the Mosaic Internet browser that blossomed into Netscape--she says she suggested that he work on a browser. Andreessen carried the browser away to Silicon Valley glory in 1993. The NCSA contended that it owned the rights to the work done in its laboratories, and sued Andreessen. After years of contentious litigation, NCSA came away with just $3 million from Netscape. Andreessen, of course, became a multimillionaire and appeared on the cover of Time.
Ping felt it was her destiny to create something of value. Why else would fate have commended her to such an unlikely pilgrimage?
The episode proved pivotal for Ping. Andreessen wasn't the computer scientist or software programmer that she was, but he possessed ruthless drive and laser-beam focus, and he had created a company--and an idea--of transformative value. Ping hardly wanted to become another Mark Andreessen, but she felt it was her destiny to create something of Netscape-like value. Why else would fate have commended her to such an unlikely pilgrimage?
In many respects, China had prepared Ping for America. It had taught her about work, and fearlessness. But China held her back, too. The Chinese character--especially the female Chinese character--was prone to reticence and a certain degree of submission. If Ping wanted to finish the job that fate had imposed, then she would have to suppress that side of her nature. Yet at the same time, she couldn't force or fake an Andreessen-like persona. Ping had to remain herself; or perhaps, she must finally become herself.
During her dozen years in the U.S., Ping had realized dreams beyond dreams, yet in a way she was less satisfied than on the day she'd first landed at San Francisco Airport. She still felt cut off, and not simply from life in America. She had told no one about her past in China, scenes from which still haunted her waking hours and revisited her in nightmares. She had made many friends in America, but no intimate ones, and had allowed no man to get close to her. Outwardly warm and exuberant, Ping felt frozen inside.
In 1993 Ping earned her U.S. citizenship and returned to China for the first time since her deportation. The worst of the totalitarian curse had lifted. Private enterprises were flourishing, many ordinary citizens were prospering. But behind the nation's glossy new surface, Ping wondered if anything fundamental had changed. She arrived in Nanjing to confront her mother and, ultimately, herself.
Back in 1958, when Ping was just 11 days old, her mother had sent her away to be raised by an aunt and uncle in Shanghai. They were a kind and loving couple. Her uncle had taught her a rule for money that she still lived by: Spend some, save some, invest some, give some away. The Great Famine of the early 1960s largely passed over her adoptive family, but not so the tempest of the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guard tore Ping away from her aunt and uncle and returned her to Nanjing, the place of her national registry. She arrived in the city just in time to watch her parents be hauled away to a re-education camp.
Through the ordeals of the next several years, Ping consoled herself with fantasies of her mother. She dreamed that her mother would comfort her when she returned home. She might not be able to explain the terrible things that had happened--what could possibly account for so much cruelty and pain?--but at least her mother could hold her.
In 1968, when Ping was 10, her mother was permitted to return to Nanjing. (Her father was retained in the camp.) The homecoming, however, was far from the tender reunion that Ping had fantasized. Rather than comfort her daughter, the woman, half-crazed by her own exile and suffering, persecuted her.
"She whipped and slapped me, she took my flesh between her fingers and pinched me," Ping recalls. It is the day after the team-training session and she sits at a conference table in her office. Earlier in the interview, while she recounted other traumatic experiences, Ping's eyes had glistened. But now she speaks with a measured calm.
"Intellectually, I understood," she goes on. "I understood that my mother was not herself, that her own misery was such that she had to lash out at me. I knew that in my head, but in my heart it was something different. I could forgive my mother for sending me away when I was a baby--she had a career, she never wanted to be a mother--but I could not forgive her for what happened when she came back from the camp. 'How could you have treated me this way?' I demanded of her."
Ping's family, instead of sympathizing with the abused child, scorned her for confronting her mother. Despite 50 years of Communist rule, a Confucian morality still held sway in the nation. Filial piety was the paramount rule. How could a daughter bring such grief to her mother?
"Everybody ganged up on me," Ping recalls. "And that was the last straw. Something broke inside me. For my whole life I had lived for others. Now I realized that something must change. I had done everything I could. Now it was time to move on."
So Ping went home to America. Destiny continued to tug at her and now, finally, she recognized its shape.
