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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''In the past some people said that Lei Feng's spirit was outdated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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