Sun Ching-Mei was born in 1949 in Xiamen in the Fujian Province of China during what may be one of the most world-defining political upheavals of modern times, the political and military clash between Mao Zedong’s People's Liberation Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party. Even with the support of the United States, Chiang Kai-shek was forced to flee China in 1949 to the nearby island of Taiwan (Republic of China), taking along his army and supporters. Ching-Mei's father, a highly placed military man in Chiang Kai-shek's army, and his family were amongst the over two million refugees who crossed the Taiwan Strait to Taiwan.
After the family’s crossing, Ching-Mei was given up for adoption to her Uncle and Aunt to provide that childless couple a family as well as relieve the burden on her biological family. (Remember that the Chinese culture once viewed girl children as less desirable because, when married, they would eventually leave their biological family to live with and care for their husband’s family). On a remarkable note, however, Ching-Mei’s biological and adopted family lived in shared spaces; Ching-Mei grew up in a large, if oddly connected, extended family.
Perhaps in a backlash to the anti-intellectual Cultural Revolution that the Chinese Nationalist Party fled in 1949, education in Taiwan became a country-wide focus and source of family pride. Children went to school six-days a week and were required to pass exams to be admitted to the better schools, even at the grade school level. Ching-Mei did well at school and brought honor to her biological and adopted parents. Ching-Mei attended the prestigious Fu-Jen University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics.
In a show of assertiveness that would have been rare in Taiwan in 1967, Ching-Mei applied for and was granted a scholarship to the Wichita State Mathematics Masters program in Kansas. Against her family’s wishes a 90 pound Ching-Mei (when wet) flew to the United States with a few personal things, questionable English skills and a desire to get away from home. Ching-Mei received her Master’s degree in Mathematics from Wichita State in 1974. Her English was much better when she graduated.
Ching-Mei then attended Ohio State University from 1974 to 1976 with the hope of a PhD in Mathematics but was side-tracked with marriage (Wlasuk is not a Chinese name) and a move to New Jersey to start work at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1976. Starting out at Murray Hill then moving to Piscataway then Holmdel, Ching-Mei experienced Bell Laboratories during its golden years. Before AT&T divestiture in 1988 and funded by the Baby Bells, the Bell Laboratories that Ching-Mei knew was responsible for radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, and the C programming language. Ching-Mei‘s role at Bell Labs was far more modest (no Nobel prize) with her time being spent on Net 1000 (AT&T’s version of the Internet), VideoTex (another precursor to the Internet), modems and telephony devices of many forms.
Ching-Mei’s last six years with AT&T were based in the Consumer Products division of AT&T in Indianapolis, Indiana with a focus on the development of micro-processor based telephony devices. In an ever smaller AT&T (post divestiture) Ching-Mei was a designer, developer, tester and field supporter of specialized pay phones. Ching-Mei’s retirement from AT&T in 2002 with a full pension and benefits allowed her to take her design, development and testing skills and form Ching Software, a single-person consulting firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana.
As her two children now head off to college, Ching-Mei’s next challenge is the expansion of Ching Software into a consulting firm that is far broader than her original one-person shop. Having received her MBA from IU in 2002 and gained an understanding of the commercial mechanisms of a small company, Ching-Mei has set her sights on running a business, not being the business. Ching-Mei’s English skills are a lot better; her understating of technology has been honed by being a member of one of the world’s most prestigious research and development organizations in the world; she understands business and has seen the world of consulting. While not a walk in the park, growing Ching Software into a larger consulting company will be a lot less scary than crossing the Taiwan Strait during a war, moving to the United States as a language-challenged 20-year old or rising up to her full 5 foot, 90 pound height and telling her mom she was leaving home.