In contemporary Chinese culture today is Lei Feng Day. Lei Feng appears to have been a real person, who following his premature death at twenty-one was selected by Chairman Mao and others to be the exemplar of selflessness, modesty, energy, and, well of course, devotion to Mao.
And interestingly his cult seems to have survived throughout all the vicissitudes of Chinese political culture over the years. While he has suffered some in popularity, and it is hard to say how long he will continue to be a figure of popular imagination, for now he’s still held up, and celebrated as an exemplar of care and service.
Digging in a bit we can see some interesting parallels in how he comes to be an exemplar, a saint, if you will, and those in more obvious religious situations. I like, for instance, how just like many spiritual texts his famous diary was almost certainly forged later to serve the purposes of the Party.
Reminds me of many saints whose lives are at best tangentially connected to a living person. They serve as paragons of some virtue or another, or serve as the go to deity for some specific problem or activity or place. Often they take on both tasks. Perhaps the most famous in the Christian calendar would be the Sts Barlaam and Josaphat, who to the embarrassment of various when discovered in the nineteenth century to be patterned on the life of the Buddha.
On the other hand divorced from the messiness and contradictions of actual people saints can be marshaled to larger purposes. Lei Feng, of course. But, can be pretty much any figure who comes to stand for the distillation of some positive human quality. There are various “patrons” like St Augustine (actually both of them) who are patrons for scholars, St Bernadette to whom you call on in illness, Frances de Sales the patron for teachers, and of course Our Lady of Guadalupe who is the patron of the whole of the Americas. Considering our current American presidential campaign, she’s probably getting lots of petitions these days. And speaking of her, her Buddhist counterpart Avalokitesvara the manifestation of all forms of compassion, is also a safe refuge in a time of storm.
So, let us pause for just a moment to recall Lei Feng who may have made a bad call in his personal devotion to the chairman, if he did, of course, most likely he was just an ordinary draftee killed in an unfortunate accident, but who then became for all of us an exemplar of care and service.
Care and service. A good thing. And a good thing to remember.
Care and service. These days, a very good thing to recall.
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