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When we heard Ping Fu's gang rape story, we made a quick judgment following this reasoning process:
In 1968 in China:
A 10 year girl was raped . Possible .
A 10 year girl was gang-raped by ten boys of her age. Very unlikely if not impossible (boys at that time might not know how to do sex ... most boys were unbelievably ignorant about sex ).
A 10 year girl was gang-raped by ten boys on a university campus in the soccer field, the center of public activities, during day time. Impossible;
A 10 year girl was gang-raped by ten boys on a university campus in a soccer field during the day, lost her consciousness, left there to die and none reported it. ABSOLUTELY impossible.
Just reading the gang-rape story as it was presented in the book, anyone with a dot of intelligence would clearly see the gang-rape was fabricated.
In the following, I am going to dissect the gang rape story as it is described in the book (P75-78).

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The gang rape episode consists of two parts: beating first, rape followed.

The story began in a "hot summer afternoon" (P75) when she was in the dorm (1968). Some boys came to inform her that her sister needed help in the river. She rushed to the river, jumped into to it to rescue her. Then she and her sister ran toward the dorm. Ten or so boys chased them.

"The wet clothes hugged my body tightly. I felt naked" (the author has this in mind: to create a sex scene: a girl with clothes wet, appeared to be naked, with her little chest popped up, thus arose the animal sexual desire of the boys). Close to the dorm, she pushed her sister into it to save her sister. The ten some boys then caught her and carried her to the Soccer Field (where she watched a teacher was torn apart by four horses). They dropped her on the ground at their feet. She curled on herself to protect herself. They kicked her. "One of the boys kicked me so hard that I flew into the air and landed on another boy's steel-tipped worker's boots. I heard a crack like a tree branch splitting and felt a sharp pain in my tailbone."

It was A HOT SUMMER AFTERNOON in NANJING. The temp would be 90-120 degrees. Nobody would wear "steel-tipped worker's boots" ! Most kids should have been wearing slippers or sanders (try to wear that kind of boots yourself at that time - your feet would be thoroughly cooked in one hour!)

Secondly, to kick someone curled on the ground to fly into the air and land a few feet away is a scene could only be seen in Kung Fu movie, in real life, it is extremely hard. Given the boy's age (10-15?) and strength and the 10 year old girl's weight (60-70 pounds), it was an absolutely impossible scene.

First, the kick must be very powerful depends on the weight of the being kicked, and the kick must land on the right point of the body to make it fly, and the kicker needs to wear the right shoes, otherwise his toe would be broken and foot seriously injured (the author tried to hint the kicker worn steel-tipped worker's boots, they were right for the kick, but not for the timing: hot summer in Nanjing). And if someone was really good at that, and did kick a 60-70 pounds girl curled on ground with little clothes to fly into the air, what was the consequence? Most likely she would be killed instantly!

How hard for a boy at her age to do that? Ask your wife curled on the floor, and see if you can kick her to fly into the air and land a few feet away. If you happen to be a martial arts master and get the job done, can you imagine the result?

Reading on the description of the beating scene, I would like to say this to the author: writing fiction is not that easy, you must have good memory (Keep in mind: it was HOT SUMMER, Nanjing!) and if you are trying to describe a kung fu fighting scene, you must have practiced a little bit kung fu - watching Kung Fu movie is not enough!

The author appeared to be a good writer. She has not forgot to mention later that there was a tailbone broken to back up this kick. But if that kick did happen, she was dead instantly or seriously injured. Don't say this is a typo or an error of memory. If one really got beating up and experienced extremely sharp pain during childhood, one would never forget, or he forget it completely in the case his brain was damaged.

Now let's go to the rape scene.
First, we need to have a clear picture of a soccer field in a Chinese university campus. The author mentioned that it was the "site of many a bitter meal". The soccer field in a university is the center of public activities and public life, people play soccer, do exercises there; the movie was shown there , all the big gathering or meeting were held there and etc. The ground thus was stamped to be as hard (it was earth) as rocks. Thus, in a hot summer afternoon, the ground was hard and hot.
Now she was pinned down. "one of the boys who wasn't pinning me down took a knife out of his pocket", "all I could do was feel the boys cutting my clothes off, the knife ripping into my armpit and my bare stomach, and the pain of something blunt pressing between my legs. I lost consciousness."

When you write a mystery fiction, you just keep the story going, when you do not know how to deal with the details, let the readers to figure them out (trust me, nobody would bother to figure them out ), you just lead them jump to the next part of the story. The author gets this, so she jumped over the part that is hard to deal with.

"The next thing I remember, I woke up in the NUAA health clinic." A nurse told her that she sustained "deep cuts, a broken tailbone, and internal injuries". And "it had taken more than forty stitches to close the wounds" . However, she was taken back to her dorm by the stuff the very day! The very night, her little sister took care of her: "That night, she came home with warm buns and stir-fried greens, which she had sweet-talked a neighbor into giving her, and insisted that I eat first."
Anyone would shed tears when they came to this point. Good fiction. But it is easy to draw a picture of a ghost, it is hard to draw a picture of a dog.

According to the narrative, she "lost consciousness" at the very beginning of being raped. Then how did she appear at the scene? She must appear to be dead.
Now we have to talk about the boys' ages. The author didn't mention their ages, she let the readers to guess; she COULD NOT AND WOULD NOT clearly say the boys' ages. If she gave any specific ages of the boys, it might prevent the story from developing smoothly: if they were too young, say they were all just 9 or 10, the readers would doubt their capability of raping someone; if they were too old - say 16 or 18, readers would know that it was impossible: it is a shame for any 16-18 year old boys to fuss around 6-10 year old girls. It appears to be a skillful handling of the ages of the boys: you guess.

Let me put their ages at around 10, the oldest was 15. Those boys were mostly children of university teachers or stuffs, better educated and more civilized than average Chinese kids.

Now imagine, when the 10 boys, mostly around 10 years old (one was 15), saw a girl passed out when she was raped by one of them, what was their reaction?
Were they going to be scared to death? Were they going to run away, stand still, or to line up to rape their next door girl's corpse or dead body one by one in a hot sun on the burning hard ground (Keep in mind, the ground was so hot that none would dare to touch it with their hands.)

What's more, at the time youngsters were generally ignorant about sex. Even they were asked to "Gan Ta" (F*** her), are you sure they know what to do? I guess at least some of them did not know what to do! (Ask anyone grew up at the time and you will know that). Most of them might think hitting a girl on the back or even just touch her clothes was the job done!

What were the boys going to do when they were facing a girl appeared to be dead? I guess, most likely they would give out a cry and run away! Nobody dared to touch a dead body splashed with blood! -- Dear reader, what is your thought?

Here comes the big hole.
According to the narrative in the book (P77), she passed out at the very beginning of being raped and when she woke up, she was in the clinic. So she could not know what had happened to her if nobody told her that she was gang raped till today. She only knew that she was raped by one boy (gang-rape is raped by at least two on one occasion), she can only claim that she was raped. But immediately after this sketchy description, she jumped to the conclusion that "I had been gang-raped" (P 77).

How did she get to know she was gang-raped ? Searching through the pages, we found no clue. The only thing she mentioned was that "after that day, Zhang spread word that I had a new nickname , "broken shoe" ..." Being called "broken shoes" didn't mean anything, just like being called someone's "concubine" doesn't mean that she was someone's concubine. How did she get to know she was gang raped? Who informed her of that? When was she informed of that?

Obviously, the author totally forgot that she was writing a memoir ! Writing fiction, the author, as the sole narrator, is everywhere and knows everything. So she could jump to the conclusion that the heroine was gang-raped. But here the heroine is the only witness of the scene and she is the only narrator of what happened at the scene. According to the narrative, she passed out at the very beginning of being raped and when she woke up she was in the NUAA health clinic. If nobody else told her that she was gang-raped, she would only know that she was raped by one boy! If anyone informed her that she was gang raped, then the incident must be known to others, and some investigation would have been carried out.

I have some suggestions for improvement to creating a more plausible story of being gang raped:
1. To make the narrative sound truthful as a memoir, you must always remember you were writing a memoir, and if you want to claim you knew you were gang-raped from your own experience rather than informed by others, you should put it this way, "I almost lost my consciousness" instead of saying "I lost my consciousness" (P 77) and then say "When I gained my full consciousness back" instead of "when I woke up";
2. Secondly, if you have to create a gang-rape scene in a hot summer afternoon in Nanjing, let it be happening under a tree. The ground of the soccer field at the time was too burning hot to touch!
3. Stage it anywhere but the soccer field. It is the center of public life of a university. To make it happen there is just like put a gang rape show. There were too many people there all clock around.
4. Make it happen in an evening. Not only to avoid being noticed by passers-by , but for not to scare the boys to death when the being raped passed out.

1. She was taken back to her dorm the very day by a stuff.
Questions:
How did the stuff take her to the dorm, did she walk home? Was she carried home by the stuff, naked (since her clothes were a pile of dirty and bloody clothes)? If not, who provided her the clothes? She worn skirt or pants? Most likely she could not wear pants.
2. Her parents were not informed. (To make sure this really happened, her parents must be kept out of the story )
3. Her sister brought her food. Some kind neighbors helped her out. But how could she go to bathroom? Could she walk? How did she pee?
4. No investigation (a pile of torn and bloody clothes was taken home with her the very night. P 78).
5. Subsequently, of course, nobody in the wild world knows that she was gang raped except Ping Fu herself (actually, she herself was not supposed to know it - she passed out in the very beginning of it according the book.)

The author would argue that, no, nobody would report this rape case, because she was a child of the black element. If truly something like this happened, IT MUST Be reported once any adult knew she was raped and harmed so horribly. While you, as a writer of a fiction, you know that the horrible things was done by a group of kids, but in real life, the adult who saw you and treated you didn't know as you know . They only knew that there was a cold blood rapist (surely an adult) , a murder, a most horrible criminal ,was lingering on the campus. They would worry the rapist harm their children! It must be reported to the authority and an emergent hunt for the violator would be carried out, it would HAVE made a loud noise and many people will still remember the crime till today!

If you want to claim it really happened and nobody in the university know that, the author should put it this way: I picked up myself from the ground of the soccer field, struggled back to the dorm, took a cold water shower, changed my clothes and lied down, cried and cried with my little sister ....