You raise an excellent point, attempts at moral exhortation have a long history in China as does the use of iconic figures as part of moral education.

Just a quick note to thank you for this post, and also to note that efforts to promote and reinforce good behavior in this way have a long history in China. I was just reading an article about community compacts (xiangyue) in the Song (and then Zhu Xi’s reincarnation of them) and they were deployed in a similar way–in this sense, a written guideline for correct, harmonious behavior. And, of course, there were enormous efforts to this end during the Republican period as well (most prominently the New Life Movement of the mid-30s). In response to earlier posters who have mentioned that the Lei Feng phenomenon is a reflection of Chinese people’s inability to act on these norms of “good behavior,” I would gently suggest instead that it is rather evidence of the persistence of a set of ideal behaviors.

Ironically, on the newest March 05, I was the only one who can still remember Lei Feng in my friends circle (a community of Chinese students who are studying somewhere overseas).

By the way, I read all the diaries of Lei Feng and can still remember a lot. It was not seldom in the 60s and 70s (also the first years of 80s) for young Chinese college students and workers to write such kind of diaries on order to get some political privileges in contests etc.

Thanks for the tip. It was actually a typo, I had originally used the “Uncle Lei Feng reads revolutionary stories” poster from 1965, switched to the “wholeheartedly serve the people” and then forgot to erase the date.

By the way, words cannot describe the gratitude that those of use interested in modern Chinese history have for your hard work and research into the world of Chinese visual propaganda.

Kudos.

the first poster you quote can’t be from 1965: the aesthetics were different in those days. This poster, and the other ones from the series (not quoted here) must be from the early 1980s. However, they are undated.

cheers

stefan

In a nutshell, it’s all due to economic and Chinese culture. Let me explain…

Unlike in the capitalist West where people mostly strive to carve out their own wealth in a developed society, China, particularly back in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s, was a developing nation where there were limited economic means to encourage people to put in more hard work, i.e. no exponential pay raise or fat bonus for people like Lei Feng. So his “selfless contribution to the society” was exploited by the CPC to help address this issue.

Then in Western culture, I’m always amazed at how people would go out of their way to help a stranger in need. I just slammed Christianity for their bigotry in many so-called “pro-life” matters in another post of mine on Granite Studio’s blog. But I can’t help feeling it might have something to do with the positive side of their religious ideas: helping people for nothing in return — whereas in a non-Christian China, people rarely lift a finger to help a stranger, although they do tend to help those in their family and friend circles. But not strangers. In a culture like China’s where people don’t usually help others, Lei Feng’s role model was much needed.