Lei Feng's
Immortal Spirit
Changsha Journal: He's the Very Model of a Legendary
Communist
The New York Times February 27, 1990, Section A; Page 4, Column
3; Foreign Desk
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to The New York Times
Lei Feng was not just a regular nice guy, he was excruciatingly nice:
the kind of fellow who secretly washed his comrades' laundry and dreamed
not of beautiful women but of Mao.
While others frittered away their time enjoying themselves, Lei Feng devoted
his leisure to laboring on construction projects and giving away his savings
to destitute peasants. When he took train rides, he not only gave up his
seat to others, but also spent the journey washing the windows and sweeping
the floors.
Lei Feng died at the age of 21 in 1962, when a truck knocked a pole on
his head, but since then he has achieved the ultimate honor for an atheist:
sainthood.
Mao Zedong himself started the Learn from Lei Feng movement in 1963, and
since then there have been periodic campaigns to study the Communist hero.
In the secular China of the last decade, Lei Feng was in eclipse, but
since the rise of the hard-liners last year he has returned with a vengeance
as the symbol of Communist righteousness.
Television Series Due
The newspapers are again full of articles about the need to learn the
Lei Feng spirit. A television series on Lei Feng's life will be released
soon. Half a million copies of his diary have been freshly published and
distributed throughout the nation. A newly distributed videotape advises
local ''work units'' how to arrange Lei Feng programs. And the Communist
Youth League is planning Learn From Lei Feng Day.
Here in the southern Chinese city of Changsha, where Lei Feng was born
and raised, Lei Mengxuan is almost beside himself with glee at the new
turn of events.
Mr. Lei, a distant relative of the hero and the director of the Lei Feng
Memorial Museum here, saw a 60 percent increase in the number of visitors
to his museum last year, to 80,000. This year, he expects groups from
schools, army units and companies to exceed 200,000 visitors, the highest
total in more than a dozen years.
''In the past some people said that Lei Feng's spirit was outdated and
even useless,'' Mr. Lei said, shaking his head at such heresy. ''When
Lei Feng's spirit wasn't emphasized, people stopped doing good deeds.
Even when someone was drowning in the river, no one would come to help
unless they were offered money.''
The Rise of Rapacity
Many middle-aged and elderly Chinese share Mr. Lei's concern that the
rapid change of the last dozen years tore at the nation's moral fabric,
and substituted rapacity and materialism for traditional values. Thus
the campaign aims to make people not only better Communists, but also
more likely to give up their seat in the bus to the elderly.
There is another reason for the vigor of the latest Lei Feng campaign:
power politics. Lei Feng was a soldier, and so acclaim for him tends to
rub off on the People's Liberation Army. The present campaign is being
orchestrated by the army - some say by the chief political commissar,
Yang Baibing - and it may be intended to increase the military's prestige
and influence in national affairs.
The Guangzhou Military Region has been the most energetic in pushing the
campaign, and has backed an effort to manufacture and distribute 500,000
cassette tapes with 1960's songs like ''We Want to Be Lei Feng Kind of
Kids'' and others hailing ''Uncle Lei Feng.'' The words from ''Lei Feng,
Our Comrade in Arms,'' are typical:
In learning from Lei Feng, Our red hearts are the party's In learning
from Lei Feng.
Raise the banner of Mao Zedong
March on! March on! Strive on for Communism! In the United States, one
suspects, naughty schoolchildren would promptly rewrite the lyrics to
make fun of Lei Feng. In China, some regard him as a revolutionary relic,
but few disparage him.
''I agree with the idea of trying to make people more courteous,'' said
a Chinese woman in her late 30's, ''but I'm not sure if it's going to
work to use Lei Feng. I doubt that the methods of the 60's will work in
the 90's.''
A Chinese Tradition
The Lei Feng campaign may have the ring of Communist propaganda to it,
but it also emerges from a Chinese tradition since ancient times of using
individual models to teach ethics.
In Taiwan as well, teachers use heroic models to teach ethics in the classroom.
But the heroes used in Taiwan are drawn from ancient China, while Lei
Feng was a child of the Communist revolution. An impoverished 8-year-old
orphan at the time of the 1949 revolution, he became fiercely loyal to
the regime that gave him new opportunities for schooling and a career.
Some Western skeptics have doubted that Lei Feng ever existed, and in
particular have wondered aloud how it is that there are so many photos
of him performing good deeds. Mr. Lei, whose museum abounds with such
photos, admits that many of the photos were posed. He says that Lei Feng
was selected as a model soldier by the local military region even before
he died, and that some of the photos were taken for an exhibition in 1962.
Mr. Lei acknowledges that his relative was flesh and blood, and occasionally
was naughty as a boy.
''One day he dug a hole in the ground, and then covered it with leaves
and twigs,'' Mr. Lei recalled, when pressed for an example of the hero's
misconduct. ''As he had intended, someone walked along and -plunk - fell
into the hole.''
© 1990 The New York Times Company
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