My introduction

Because today is Lei Feng Day in China, it popped up on my computer calendar, and it’s also Zhou Enlai’s birthday. Just a coincidence, but I’ll have a little article about him too after this one.

I feel so much shame!

This is a chapter from the first book of The China Trilogy, 44 Days Backpacking in China (https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00TX0TDDI/allbooks).

Reading it today, I was utterly shocked and disappointed in myself for what I wrote in this chapter thirteen years ago. I was so cynical and still brainwashed by the Judeo-Western Big Lie Propaganda Machine vomit about communist China up to the time that I wrote my first book.

I righted the ship in China Rising

In fact, my first book inspired me to write the second book of The Trilogy, China Rising, because I knew there was something wrong. I knew something wasn’t quite right, and I needed to find out more. Of course, I did thousands of hours of research to produce my second book and then took it further into a trilogy with The BIG Red Book on China, book number three.

Doing the right thing

Therefore, to publish this chapter here from my first book, I corrected all of the humiliating garbage that I wrote in the original chapter. Very, very embarrassing, but at least I’ve grown, changed, understand China and the Chinese people much more accurately, realize my “freshman” mistakes.

Thus, this is 95% of the original chapter, written in 2013, updated in 2026.

Lei Feng R-O-C-K-S!

Lei Feng is an amazing icon in China. He’s everywhere. Back in when I was living in China in the 1990s, Westerners insulted him and made fun of him, because Chinese respected Lei Feng so much and what he represented.

Up until I wrote 44 Days in 2013, I was not much better. Now, I can see that the Chinese have a wonderful role model for the children to emulate, a wonderful model for adults, workers and families to emulate, because Lei Feng represents all of the great many of the great traits of the noble Chinese character: Confucius, Laozi, Buddha – not to mention communism-socialism and Mao Zedong Thought, which are just as influential.

This is a funny chapter

I wrote some very funny chapters in The China Trilogy and this is one of them. Enjoy.

Happy Lei Feng Day!

Jeff

China Rising chapter

It was bound to happen. Lei Feng, Mao Zedong’s alter ego super hero of the Chinese Communist revolution is omnipresent in China, exhorting the people to feats of sacrifice, common good and Herculean effort. Here is just one of many Lei Feng billboards found riding around Beijing, or China for that matter. I saw him everywhere I turned during my 44 Days journey:

Each Lei Feng billboard or dazibao is invariably different. This one says,

Study Lei Feng
Contribute to others
Lift yourself up

Not exactly a public service announcement that comes to mind in New York, London or Paris. But in China, this is vintage political wine. Grand Cru. Mind you, Lei Feng thrived and became a rock star in the the Great Leap Forward (1958-61), but died in 1962, at the tender age of 22, only to miss the grand finale in revolutionary success, the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76. His brief existence inspired Baba Beijing to take his love of the Communist Revolution and apotheosizing his life and image into something along lines of Superman crossed with a Greek god. Lei Feng is truly an icon, an avatar of China’s hard fought Communist Revolution. Thus he is a Chinese Revolution rock star to this day.

 

A group of children practicing being Lei Feng. He is a popular icon to imitate in schools and government.

 

Thus, I was more than a little surprised to see several billboards on the Beijing-Tianjin expressway using the Lei Feng motif to sell services from the Zhonglian Electrical Service Association:

It can be taken two ways: as an abomination of modern national history or that Lei Feng has finally arrived. It’s like they say, if an artist’s music is being played in elevators or department stores as background tunes, then that means they’ve sold a ton of records. I’ve heard Beatles songs rendered via syrupy orchestra strings in China, for crying out loud. I have the utmost respect for the Chinese people and the incredible, almost miraculous sociocultural evolution they have managed in just one generation. Many other peoples would be hard pressed to repeat what 20% of the world’s people sacrificed here through almost 30 years of relentless building, development and industrialization 1949-1976. They have come far, so, so far.

But, today, they have found themselves and forge their own unique identity, what Western pundits derisively pun as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, as is the case for human frailty, it’s often two steps forward and one step back. Their big step back is the Chinese have a knack for adopting many of the worst aspects of American culture, especially when it comes to money, making money and spending it. Which is to say, ummm… the essence of the United States, pure and simple. I mean let’s be honest, it’s pretty one-dimensional in the 50 States. Always has been. Money talks and shit walks. Bling, McMansions, supersized portions big enough to make Roman epicureans retch, and SUVs mammoth scaled to serve as shoreline ship tugs. And it’s never enough. Why rent a jet ski when you can buy two – on credit?

Too many Chinese are not savvy or experienced enough to understand the vacuity and meaninglessness of consumerism on steroids. They are just aping what they consider to be the defining apex of success: working harder and longer to buy and pile up more and more inane Stuff and Fluff – shop till you drop, as they say, in malls across America.

There are hucksters in every culture and country, but none more so than the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville made these same observations during his travels, which generated his foundational 1835 masterpiece of social studies, Democracy in America, a must read for anybody who claims to know a thing or two about the good old U.S. of A. Nothing’s changed in 400 years: money’s been talking and shit’s been walking in North America, since Jamestown in 1607.

Apparently, somebody at Zhonglian Electrical Services Association has lived in the United States. American businesses, especially local ones in dire need of some marketing inspiration, will drag out hoary chestnuts, like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, to sell everything from stereo equipment to plumbing services.

 

I cannot tell a lie, these headphones ROCK, maaaaan, I mean groooovy baby! (image by 2.bp.blogspot.com)

 

Uncloggging a toilet a day keeps the doctor away. And the smell? Electric! (image by elocalplumbers.com)

 

And yes, even egomaniac, narcissistic Steve Jobs signed off on this vacuous bit of marketing flatulence:

 

As I recall, Steve didn’t mention this ad in his OCD biography (image by bluefaqs.com)

 

It must have been a very bad week for Stevie Boy, when he gave the thumbs up for this old, flogged to death marketing mule. Next thing you know, we are going to start seeing Mao Zedong pushing used cars, or Zhou Enlai barking out for Slice-O-Matics on late night TV in China. If Lei Feng can do it, they can’t be far behind!

I can just see it now:

Hi, I’m Mao Zedong and I want to sell you a used CAR!

Comrades, why this is more fun than persecuting counterrevolutionaries! (image by maizenbrew.com with chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com)

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