Begin at the Beginning

Poor Lei Feng died in 1962 and soon gain a level of national fame that he would never have dreamed about during his life. His turn from selfless, common soldier to national hero to be studied and followed by generations of Chinese school kids started only after the above piece of calligraphy by Chairman Mao. Sure, the reality of Lei's "heroics" could be argued, but real or created, his heroism and the values he represents are a good thing, promoting helping your fellow man and being a "good" person. The "myth" of Lei Feng in China can be compared to the US myth of "Honest" Abe and George and his cherry trees, times ten or so. That whole "myth" was re-energized with the song and the resulting flash video called "Dongbei Ren Dou Shi Huo Lei Feng" (A version of that famous video can be found here).

I'm starting this blog hoping that its going to fill a bit of a niche on the web. If you're looking for a great daily news/commentary blogs on China, you have Peking Duck or Danwei for that, if you're looking for a photo "blog" there is ziboy, if you're looking for the best blog on Shanghai, there's Wang Jianshuo's blog. However, as far as I know, there is nothing like that for Beijing, yet, and while I don't think mine can ever compare to Wang's, I'm setting out to take up the challenge.

As a music lover, I also intend to make this into an mp3 blog with weekly postings of a wide variety of Chinese songs. This blog will be thrice weekly, with 2 posts a week on random topics of my choice and 1 post a week featuring Chinese music. I hope its going to be interesting, educational, and possibly even funny on occassions, a site that will cover anything and everything, so make sure to come back a lot!