Category Archives: Chinese History   Happy Learn from Lei Feng
Day!  On this date in 1963, Mao Zedong launched the “Learn from
Lei Feng” campaign, which is great because 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.
In case you missed it (or have recently been hit on the head by
a large wooden object) 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.  He was directing one his fellow soldiers to
back up a truck (Possible last