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Lei Feng's Immortal Spirit
The Foolish Old Man and Other Heroes:
Although Some Sneer at the Stories, All Chinese Are Fed an Endless
Diet of Role Models.
The Government Uses These Folk Sagas to Educate, Entertain -- and
Control
Los Angeles Times May 8, 1990
Part H; Page 4; Column 1; Foreign Desk
By DAVID HOLLEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Lei Feng is a most unlikely hero.
A military man who died in a ridiculous accident, Lei Feng was a
naive do-gooder whose highest goal was to be a "rustless screw" in
the great machine of communism.
His short life, according to official histories, came to an abrupt
end in 1962, when one of his comrades backed a truck into a
utility pole. Lei, 22, failed to dodge, and the falling pole
killed him.
An ignominious end? Not at all. The next year, Chairman Mao
Tse-tung himself called on the entire nation to "learn from Lei
Feng."
The resulting movement faded in the mid-1980s, as attention turned
to material incentives and economic development. But now China is
in the midst of a Lei Feng revival, thanks largely to last June's
massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing.
What's going on here?
Many things, at many levels.
For one thing, Lei has lots of company in a long and mostly
honorable tradition of model figures.
There's the Foolish Old Man who moved the mountain, the hero of an
old fable about perseverance. Mao revised the old man's story into
a political tract on fighting imperialism. Then there are
historical figures like the Song Dynasty general, Yue Fei, a model
of patriotism for generations of schoolchildren. And there are new
heroes like Lai Ning, a 14-year-old boy who died fighting a forest
fire.
The use of moral suasion to educate and control the masses is
quintessentially Chinese, with roots more than 2,000 years old. In
the Communist era, Mao and his comrades could make good use of
figures like Lei, an army truck driver who did voluntary work on
construction projects and happily gave money to peasants.
"Chinese society from the beginning has this sense of people
learning from good examples, rather than from sanctions imposed on
them," commented Jerome A. Cohen, a former Harvard law professor
living in Hong Kong. "It goes back to the whole Confucian ideal
that rules and regulations are a last resort, that the good ruler
sets the standard to which all should repair. The Communists built
upon this."
Is it really surprising that the old men who crushed last spring's
protests reach out nostalgically to a safely dead, good-hearted
soldier who washed his comrades' socks without even being asked,
and who, more important, never ever questioned authority?
Who better to help refurbish the army's sullied image and promote
social stability?
So what if sophisticated and cynical urbanites mock the new Lei
Feng campaign? So what if despised "bourgeois liberals," tainted
by Western ideas of individual rights, joke that the main thing to
be learned from Lei Feng is to watch out for falling telephone
poles?
Yang Baibing, 70, responsible for political controls within the
army, declared in a speech launching the new campaign that Lei
"will forever be a brilliant example from which to learn."
He then outlined the intended lessons:
* Love for the Communist Party and hatred of class enemies.
* Obedience to the party.
* Selfless service to the people.
* Thrifty living.
* Hard work in any assignment.
Yang also left no doubt that the campaign will press the claim
that martial-law troops acted honorably in their June assault in
Beijing, which left hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians
dead.
"In the struggle to stop turmoil and quell the
counterrevolutionary rebellion . . . the units that implemented
the tasks of enforcing martial law performed in an outstanding
manner," Yang declared. "Their deeds can be described as a
reappearance of the spirit of Lei Feng."
Old Lei Feng movies are now airing on television, while a new TV
series is being created. Newspaper articles sing his praises and
publicize new examples such as Zhang Zixiang, a "model soldier of
the Lei Feng type" who gained fame earlier this year for repairing
thousands of his comrades' home appliances free. Work units and
schools organize public service activities in the name of studying
Lei Feng.
Some people respond to all this with pure cynicism, others with
seemingly unquestioning acceptance. Many have mixed feelings,
believing that Lei was indeed a good person but that his legacy is
being abused.
"I think everyone should try to be like Lei Feng," commented a
middle-aged scientist. "But I don't like it when this is used for
other purposes . . . like promoting the image of the army."
Lei's greatest influence is in schools, where his name and that of
Lai, the teen-age forest-fire-fighting martyr, are often linked.
"Through the campaign of learning from Lai Ning and Lei Feng, the
students have begun to consider the question of what is their
world outlook," said Zhang Peilan, a math teacher at a Beijing
middle school. "Before learning from Lai Ning, some of our
students would compete about who could spend more money, who ate
well, who had the more fashionable clothing."
Qi Xiaobin, a high school junior, explained how students should
learn to place collective interests first.
"Lei Feng never had a sense of individualism," she said. "He acted
for the public welfare. . . . When people consider their
individual interests and collective interests, they must consider
which is more important. . . . For example, when a test is coming
soon but we also have a big classroom cleaning activity, should we
participate in this program or go home and study? In this kind of
situation, we have to make a distinction between individualism and
collectivism. . . . We should participate and not say that because
we have to study we can't come."
Even many adults who are cynical about this latest Lei Feng
movement believe that education based on model individuals can be
good for children.
But among the partially Westernized, urban intellectual elite of
today's China, many believe that the Lei Feng campaign has it all
wrong -- that what China actually needs is to abandon the whole
Confucian legacy of meek obedience to authority.
"I think Lei Feng was just a stupid young soldier," said a
graduate student. "He didn't really understand anything about our
government. He was just obedient. This is the kind of people our
government wants. They want to hold back society, because they
know that if it develops, the government will crash down."
Times research assistant Nick Driver contributed to this story.
© 1990 The Times Mirror Company
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