BEIJING -- Taking action, however trivial it may be, to help others is the essential way of materializing the public spirit, according to a commentary carried by the People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Monday, the annual day of learning from the late altruism icon Lei Feng.
By helping the needy is how people nowadays get started with learning from Lei Feng, the article said, citing an example of pupils from a Beijing-based primary school pumping up bicycle tires for passers-by free of charge every morning before school starts.
For the past 19 years, there have been more than 3,000 such volunteers, whom the neighborhood have dubbed "little Lei Fengs," according to the article.
Lei Fei, a young Chinese soldier in the 1960s, is known for devoting almost all of his spare time and money to selflessly helping the needy. He died after being hit by a falling pole while helping a fellow soldier direct a truck on Aug. 15, 1962.
Lei actively served the people, and only by internalizing his spirit as the code of conduct and helping people as a spiritual pursuit will individuals not turn a blind eye to elderly or children in need of help, the article said.
For society, only by incorporating the Lei Feng spirit into the system of socialist core values and making it widely accepted will the "Learning from Lei Feng" campaign become a more permanent one, it said.
