Lei Feng was born in a family of poor peasants in Hunan on December 18,1940.After the Japanese killed his father,his mother committed suicide as a result of the harassment she received at the hands of the son of her landlord.A sword attack launched upon Lei as a small boy by the wife of a landlord when Lei cut wood on nearby mountains only added to a growing hatred of the landlord class.The Party saved the orphan Lei,fed him and brought him up as a mother would her own child.Then in 1960,at 20,Lei joined the People's Liberation Army,rising through its ranks to become a squad leader and a Party member.Diligent study of the works of Mao taught him how to live a life of extreme frugality,to eschew selfishness and to devote himself body and soul to the revolution and to the people.His greatest desire in life was to be nothing more than "a revolutionary screw that never rusts".
As the "little screw" he wanted to be,Lei performed many good deeds:he sent his meager savings to the parents of a fellow soldier who had been hit by a flood; he served tea and food to officers and recruits; he washed his buddies' feet after a long march,and darned their socks; he went all-out to show his devotion to the revolutionary cause.He did not commit great deeds by which he was remembered,but taught the people how to be happy with what they had,to obey the Party and to let the Central Committee,or better still,Mao himself,do their thinking for them.