Lei Feng's childhood experiences determined his clearcut class stand. He had a strong fellow feeling for all the poor and the oppressed of old China. As his understanding grew, that sympathy embraced all the world's oppressed people. He once wrote in his diary: "Two-thirds of the world's poor folk are still awaiting liberation. We cannot stand by and watch them being bullied. We must help to deliver all the peoples from misery and suffering."

Student of Chairman Mao's thinking

But it was not his origins alone that made him a communist. At the beginning his thoughts were strongly coloured by personal hatred of the landlords and a personal gratitude to the Party. The study of Chairman Mao's thinking and the Party's teachings broadened his outlook, so that he came to understand that all reactionary classes were the common enemy of the people, that the proletarian class and its vanguard was not only his personal liberator, but that of all the oppressed.

The role played in the maturing of his communist outlook by Chairman Mao and the Party's teachings runs like a red thread through the film. The following scene, taking place when Lei Feng is already in the army and a conscious revolutionary, concentratedly reflects this. The barracks' loudspeaker broadcasts the news that Chiang Kai-shek is planning a sneak attack on the mainland. Late at night, Lei Feng seeks out his company political instructor and urgently asks to join the coastal defence. He sulks when he is refused, and the instructor has a long, heart-to-heart talk with him. Once again they go through Chairman Mao's famous article "Serving the People." When they finish, Lei Feng says simply: "Now I understand. When the Party and people need me to be a Huang Chi-kuang, I will stop the enemy's bullets with my body . . . when they need me to be a Chang Szu-teh, I will make charcoal. At whatever post, I will do my utmost to serve the people." In actual life Lei Feng turned again and again to Mao Tse-tung's words as a guide to action. He had written in his diary: "After having studied the four volumes of Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works, my deepest feeling is that now I understand what kind of a man I should be, and whom I am living for. . . . I live so that others may live better." This consciousness formed the root source of his lofty ideas and moral strength.

In three deeply moving episodes, the film shows how this outlook inspired all his later actions and thoughts. Out on his offday, he passes by a building site of a primary school. Without a second thought, he joins in the work. Coming home in a sudden downpour, he helps a woman carry her grandchild a dozen kilometres out of his way to her destination. Driving a truckload of relief supplies for flood victims in a commune, he quietly and unobtrusively leaves them 100 yuan of his own savings. Lei Feng, always thrifty, had saved this sum from his allowances over a long period. The film images of these scenes are memorable.

For Lei Feng, such acts were a way of life. There was a complete freedom of any wish to be noticed or praised that made his actions totally different from philanthropy or charity. In his diary he had written: "If anyone thinks I am a 'fool,' he is quite wrong. I want to be useful to the people and the country. If that is considered the act of a fool, I am only too glad to be one, for the revolution needs such fools. . . ." The film admirably projects this unaffected simplicity of Lei Feng's.

A heart as warm as spring

One of Lei Feng's favourite mottoes was: "Treat your comrades with a heart as warm as spring." The film reveals this side of his character not through a mass of details, but in a few bold strokes, through his friendship with Wang Ta-li, a fellow soldier. The latter is a vividly drawn character: happy-go-lucky, bright rather than diligent, apt to think of his personal interests before others'. Each episode of the armymen's bustling life and their close contacts with the people subtly contrasts the two and gradually they reveal Wang's change under Lei Feng's influence. Going home urgently on leave to see his sick mother, Wang discovers that Lei Feng has already sent her a warm message and some money in his name. This last act, coming upon all the others that Wang has seen Lei Feng do before, clinches his transformation. There is a stirring scene in which, inspired by Lei Feng's spirit of selfless love of others, he rushes out of his home wordlessly to join the flood fighters on the village dyke.

The film ends with the climax in Wang's emotions. Returning to camp eager to see Lei Feng again, he suddenly learns of his comrade's death in an accident. Having shared with him step by step his previous emotions, the audience now shares with him the full shock and grief of this news. But one also realizes: he will carry on where his comrade left off.

Brief as the film had to be compared with the full richness of Lei Feng's life, it has caught his essentiai make-up and spirit. Nothing that the young soldier did was out of the ordinary, and yet he achieved greatness in doing ordinary things. He is an outstanding representative of the host of heroes in New China who have distinguished themselves in doing the routine jobs of the nation.