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Wang Dajia, a 16-year-old middle school student from Changsha, capital of central China’s Hunan Province, has supported charitable causes for nine years. After the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan Province in May 2008, Wang decided to raise money for children in earthquake-affected areas. She published a book titled Growth Starting With Gratitude, a compilation of her compositions and paintings, and held charity book sales of her book in parks, streets and schools around Changsha on weekends. She sold more than 4,000 copies within three months and raised a total of 120,000 yuan ($19,000), which was donated to a primary school in Sichuan to build a classroom with audio-visual equipment and a library.
Wang attributed her Samaritan efforts to an enduring admiration of Lei Feng, a late soldier of the People’s Liberation Army who has been a symbol of altruism in China since the 1960s. “To live is to serve the people. Live to make others happy,” Lei wrote in his dairy, which recorded his deeds and experiences and was published posthumously.
Lei was killed in an accident on August 15, 1962. On March 5, 1963, late Chinese leader Mao Zedong called for all Chinese people to “learn from Comrade Lei Feng.”March 5 has since been marked in China as Lei Feng’s Day and this year marks its 49th anniversary.
Since then, a “living Lei Feng” has become the highest praise one can receive in China for going out of one’s way to help others. Devoted employees are called “Lei Fenglike workers,” and a team sharing a strong sense of team spirit is called a “Lei Feng team.”
“I grew up listening to songs about Lei Feng without understanding the true meaning of ‘Lei Feng spirit.’ As I grew older and read the book Lei Feng’s Diary, I started to ponder what made Lei a great man. Lei is a grateful and loving person who cares for others,”Wang said.
In February, Today Morning Express in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province, conducted a survey of 1,000 local primary and middle school students and tested their knowledge of Lei. The survey revealed that 72.7 percent of students know Lei’s deeds well and 93.8 percent said that people still need to follow his example. About 11.5 percent of the students regarded Lei as their favorite idol, after 20 percent who favor business leaders and 20 percent who admire entertainment stars, but ahead of the 10.7 percent who like writers and 10.3 percent who consider sports celebrities their idols.
An idol for all
I often ask myself, my friends,
what can I give you?
Although I do not have the answer,
I know deep in my heart that I really can give you my life,
my blood and a poem written with life and warm blood.
This poem was penned by Guo Mingyi, an amateur poet and a rank-and-file worker at the Anshan Iron and Steel Group in Anshan, northeast China’s Liaoning Province. The blood in his poem has a literal meaning as Guo has donated more than 60 liters of blood over the past two decades, equal to the blood volume of 10 adults. He is always trying to encourage the people around him to become blood donors and founded a blood-donation club in July 2006. His club now has more than 900 members.
Guo has also persuaded more than 1,700 colleagues to register as volunteer donors of stem cells. In 2006, when Guo heard that a colleague’s daughter had been diagnosed with leukemia, he immediately set about trying to find people whose stem cells matched the girl’s. He convinced 400 of his colleagues to take a match test. He even sought help from local residents by speaking on a live radio program. Eventually, one volunteer turned out to be a match and the 13-year-old girl was saved.
In June 2010, Guo founded an organ donor club in Anshan and its founding members included his wife, sister-in-law and brotherin-law.
In 1994, after watching a public-service advertisement on TV about children in China’s poverty-stricken rural areas who could not afford to go to school, Guo became determined to do something to help.
Through Project Hope, a charity that helps children from rural poor families complete elementary school education, Guo made his first donation of 200 yuan ($31.7), one third of his family’s monthly income at the time, to a boy from a mountainous village in a nearby county.
Guo still treasures a letter he received from the boy, who wrote, “Uncle Guo, I want to thank you for the money you sent. I am back at school. You have given hope to my family.”
Guo burst into tears when reading the letter. From then on he never looked back in his charity work. “I don’t need the children I helped to pay me back. All I want is for them to receive education, and the knowledge that I have changed their lives for the better,” he said.
Since 1994, Guo has also donated more than 120,000 yuan ($19,000), half of his own income, to support 180 children from poor families. Although his monthly salary has increased tenfold from 300 yuan ($47.6) to 3,000 yuan ($476) over the past 20 years, his family still lives in a sparsely furnished 1980s apartment.
Moved by Guo’s actions, many people call him a “modern-day Lei Feng.”
Besides the shared quality of selflessness and kindness, Guo and Lei also seem to share similar trajectories in life. Before joining the army, Lei worked at Guo’s current company as a bulldozer driver for more than a year. Lei and Guo were even recruited to the army by the same recruiter.
“I know a lot of Lei’s fellow workers and soldiers, who told me many stories about him. I feel that he has never really left, and this strengthened my belief to follow his example and make more contributions to the country, society and others,” Guo said during an online interview in February.
Although media coverage has made Guo a household name in China, he refuses to consider himself a celebrity. “I am nothing more than an ordinary worker, volunteer and person,” he said. Guo also said that by serving the community and helping others, every volunteer is carrying forward Lei’s legacy.
Unlike previous generations, Chinese young people today tend to view Lei as an equal. “Lei Feng wore a leather jacket and liked taking photos. He was full of passion for life and a fashionable young person just like us,” said Zhang Lei, a volunteer worker and student of Hunan University.
Yan Pei, a young advertisement writer in Changsha, worked as a volunteer English teacher in remote areas of southwestern Yunnan Province for one year after graduating from college. Before registering for this volunteering opportunity, she had landed a well-paid job in her home city where her parents wanted her to settle.“Learning from Lei Feng is not about repeating any slogan, but to offer as much help as one can to those in need,” Yan said.
Always inspiring
“After seeing a brand new bicycle in the square blown onto the ground by a gust of wind, the three of us went forward and lifted the bicycle up.
“We should donate our pocket money to our fellow primary school students in Yushu County in Qinghai Province, which was struck by an earthquake in April 2010.”
These are excerpts from the “Living With Lei Feng Diary” kept by students at Lei Feng Primary School in Beijing over the course of 39 years. As an extracurricular activity, students have been asked to record their good deeds in a journal to motivate themselves and their peers.
Originally called Shuangsi Primary School, the school was renamed in honor of the national hero in 1990 after students exchanged letters with soldiers of the squad Lei served in for 17 years. According to China National Radio, there are at least 21 schools named after Lei across China.
Despite his enduring popularity in China, recently there has been an undercurrent of ridicule directed against Lei’s socalled “naivety.” As consumerism becomes the main driving force of people’s lives, self-fulfillment and self-gratification have become the top priorities for a great many people.
Some people even began to question the necessity of learning from Lei, suggesting that under a market economy, people should only get what they pay for. In recent years, a host of scandals involving bystanders who refuse to help people in trouble or good Samaritans who become the extortion victims of the people they have assisted have triggered concerns about a moral decline at many levels of Chinese society.
On August 23, 2011, for example, a female college student tried to leap to her death from the fourth floor of an apartment building in Shanghai. Her attempt attracted a large circle of bystanders. But instead of helping the suicidal woman, some bystanders laughed at her and even encouraged her to jump. When she finally landed on a cushion with only a minor bruise, one bystander even expressed disappointment saying, “She should have chosen a higher building to kill herself.”
Commenting on the cruelty and indifference of these bystanders, Liang Xiaosheng, a famous writer, said that cynicism has poisoned Chinese people’s souls.
“Nowadays the Chinese people tend to label every kind act as ‘putting on a show’,”Liang said. “As a matter of fact, there are many things that you simply have to believe in. When one helps others, you only need to believe that he or she is kind-hearted.”
This lack of trust among people has already taken a toll on morality in China. The most notorious case is the death of Wang Yue, a two-year-old toddler who was killed in a hit-and-run accident in October 2011. After the girl was knocked down by a van, 18 bystanders walked past her as she lay face down on a narrow ally in a hardware market in Foshan, south China’s Guangdong Province. When questioned, most of those passersby said they feared being framed for the accident by Wang’s family.
In this context, many scholars emphasize the eternal relevance of “Lei Feng spirit,”believing its revival will contribute to curing today’s social illnesses.
“Although laws stipulate citizens’ rights and responsibilities, people need to go beyond the law during emergencies. Even in a market economy, there must be people who are willing to make sacrifices. After people have their material desires met, they will long for higher happiness by showing compassion and conducting altruistic behaviors,” wrote Gu Jun, a sociology professor at Shanghai University.
The kindness and selflessness Lei embod- ies is also deeply rooted in Chinese culture. The ancient philosopher Mencius who lived 2,300 years ago said, “The benevolent man loves others and the courteous man respects others” and “I shall give up my life for righteousness.”
At a press conference on February 27, Luo Shugang, Executive Vice Minister of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, called on the public to learn from Lei’s selflessness for helping others, dedication to his career, self-motivated learning and thrifty lifestyle.
“In a world of global-scale problems, such as the financial crisis, climate change, environmental degradation, wars and famines, no single country or region can offer solutions alone. Now more than ever, people need to turn to Lei Feng’s thoughts and deeds for inspiration. ‘Lei Feng spirit,’ which has become part of China’s cultural and historical assets, offers a new perspective for constructing a better future for mankind and a harmonious world,” says a recent editorial from the Beijing-based Guangming Daily.
Who Is Lei Feng?
Lei Feng was born on December 18, 1940, to a farmer’s family in Wangcheng, central China’s Hunan Province. At the age of 7, he lost all the members of his immediate family and was adopted by a distant relative. He graduated from middle school in 1956 and then worked as a tractor driver on a local farm. He went on to be a bulldozer driver at the Anshan Iron and Steel Co. and in 1960 he joined a transportation unit of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) based in northeast China.
Lei was killed on August 15, 1962, while directing a truck as it backed up. A pole struck him on the head.
Lei had a habit of keeping a diary to detail his deeds and experiences, which was published after his death and became one of the bestsellers of the time.
According to Lin Ke, a secretary of late Chairman Mao Zedong, China Youth magazine approached Mao in February 1963 to write an epigraph for their special coverage on Lei. Mao wrote “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng” in traditional calligraphy.
The magazine published Mao’s writing on March 2, 1963. Three days later, it was republished by People’s Daily, PLA Daily, China Youth Daily and Guangming Daily. The news media later published handwritten epigraphs by other Party and state leaders, finally immortalizing the solider as an emblem of selflessness and devotion.