Today is Lei Feng day

Today is Lei Feng day and to celebrate about 1000 Chinese students dressed in 1960s Chinese army uniforms staged an art performance at Shanghai's bustling metro stations this morning to call on the public to follow the example of Lei Feng, the nation's most famous Good Samaritan.

What confuses me is on the one hand, Lei Feng was a soldier of the People's Liberation Army who died at age 22. After his death, Lei was characterised as a selfless and modest person who was devoted to the Communist Party and Chairman Mao. In 1963, he became the subject of a nationwide posthumous propaganda campaign portrayed as a model citizen. People were encouraged to emulate his selflessness, modesty, and devotion to Mao though today scholars believe the depictions of Lei Feng's life was almost certainly a propaganda ploy of the Communist Party.

On the other hand, the law has spoken and yesterday a pizza restaurant that gave its location as "the French Concession" has been fined 47,500 yuan (US$7,541) for violating China's advertising laws. The recently opened branch of Pizza Marzano used the name of the former colonial concession as their address in advertising leaflets. In a statement, the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau  said the restaurant had evoked the bitter history of Shanghai under colonial control which humiliated the public and went against mainstream values.

So what really is more important here - promoting a soldier who died along with thirty or forty million others during The Great Leap Forward or punishing a company for evoking the bitter history of Shanghai under colonial rule?

You decide.