45 Years of Lei Feng

On this date in 1963, Mao Zedong launched the “Learn from Lei Feng” campaign. The most important lesson I’ve learned from Lei Feng is to look out for falling telephone poles, but maybe I’m not the target audience. Anyway, in case you missed it, Lei Feng was a young soldier in the PLA whose selfless devotion to his brother troops, to the people, and especially to Mao Zedong and his country made him a role model for young Chinese. If you want to think of him as a cross between a boy scout, GI Joe, and “Opie” from the old Andy Griffith Show, go ahead I won’t stop you.

How did he die, you might ask? Fighting the dastardly American imperialists? No. Sneaking across the Himalayas to beat back Indian encroachment into the Motherland? Not really. Mortal combat with Soviet spies? Not so much. Actually, he was directing one his fellow soldiers to back up a truck (Possible last words: “Dao! Dao! Dao! Ooomph…) when the truck knocked down a telephone pole right on top of poor Lei Feng.

After his death, Lei Feng’s Diary was, erm, discovered and…lo and behold…it turns out that he was quite the young man:

March 5th, 2008

The Historical Record for March 5: Zhou Enlai and Madame Chiang Kai-shek

Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) Today is the birthday of Zhou Enlai, born in Hui’an in Jiangsu Province in 1898. Zhou’s grandfather was a minor official but like many scholar families in the late Qing, the Zhou clan had fallen on hard times, and despite many attempts, Zhou Enlai’s father failed to pass the imperial examinations. At the age of ten, Zhou was adopted by his uncle, who was childless and ill with tuberculosis, so that the uncle would not die without an heir. It was in fact Zhou’s adopted mother who taught the young man to read characters and who encouraged him in school. He was by all accounts a good student who would later go on to attend university in Japan and in Tianjin where the young revolutionary led student protests as part of the May 4th Movement and was arrested for his activities. Zhou left China in 1920 on a work-study program to France and it was in Paris that he met a 16-year old student from Sichuan named Deng Xiaoping. It was in Europe that both Deng and Zhou formally joined the Communist Party in 1921.*

Madame Chiang Kai-shek Song Meiling (1898-2003) Today is also the birthday of

March 5th, 2008

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