Rewi Alley was born in Springfield, Canterbury, on 2 December 1897 to
Frederick James Alley, a schoolmaster, and his wife, Clara Maria
Buckingham, who was active in the temperance and women's rights movements.
He was christened Rewi on the wish of his father's childless sister, Amy,
who had great admiration for Rewi Maniapoto, a Ngati Maniapoto leader.
Hard work, discipline, respect for education, and a willingness to
challenge authority were formative factors in his upbringing. His academic
record at Christchurch Boys' High School, however, was indifferent. In
March 1917 he volunteered for war service. He was wounded during combat in
France and gained the Military Medal. On returning to New Zealand he
joined a companion, Jack Stevens, in an unsuccessful six-year attempt to
break in, and then farm, hill and bush country at Moeawatea, inland from
Waverley, Taranaki. These were hard physical experiences that endowed
Alley's short frame with stamina and resilience.
Out of curiosity about China, he first went there in 1927. He intended
only to visit but stayed for the rest of his life. For the next decade he
worked in Shanghai, first as a fire officer and then as a municipal
factory inspector. Within a year of his arrival he formed a friendship
with Joseph Bailie, an Irish-American missionary, whose ideas about the
primacy of village-level education and training were an inspiration to
Alley. Another significant friendship began in 1933 when he recruited to
the Shanghai municipal council an American public health expert, George
Hatem. Other early formative friendships included those with the Americans
Edgar Snow, a journalist; Anna Louise Strong, a left-wing writer; and
Agnes Smedley, a writer and revolutionary. Alley adopted two boys within
five years of his arrival in China, Mike (Li Xue) and Alan (Duan Simou).
Both later assumed positions of public responsibility, surviving attempts
by adversaries to demote them during the Cultural Revolution. Alley was
almost certainly homosexual, and never married.
From his Shanghai base, Rewi Alley became involved in
government-sponsored flood and famine relief work, activities that were
gaining international support. In centres like Wuhan, this provided him
with direct experience of the poverty and hardship sustained by the
Chinese peasantry at the hands of the Kuomintang, an incompetent and
corrupt Chinese nationalist administration. Politically, this moved him
from the conservatism of his younger years towards active sympathy with
the Chinese Communist Party. Despite conditions of physical hardship and
some illness during the 1930s, Alley travelled widely throughout China,
gaining the experience that made his working knowledge of the country
unique among foreigners. In 1937 he briefly returned to New Zealand and
also toured Europe and North America, visiting factories. After he went
back to China later that year, he became heavily involved in establishing
the Industrial Co-operative (INDUSCO). The slogan associated with the
scheme, 'Gung Ho, Work Together', subsequently entered common usage in the
English language.
Throughout the Second World War Alley attempted to strengthen INDUSCO's
international funding base, but the scheme's need to maintain relations
with a crumbling nationalist government as well as links with the Chinese
Communist Party complicated matters. More significantly, in 1942 Alley
joined the Englishman George Hogg in running a school based on industrial
co-operative principles at Shuangshipu (Feng Xi’an), approximately 125
miles west of Sian (Xi'an).
In 1942 Alley's relations with the nationalist government deteriorated,
resulting in his dismissal from INDUSCO. Accordingly, in 1944 the school
at Shuangshipu was relocated 688 miles north-west to Shandan in Gansu
province. Only a year later, Hogg’s death from tetanus at the age of 29
was a severe blow to Alley. However, following the principles of his
mentor, Joseph Bailie, Alley encouraged the Shandan school to grow through
its tenets of 'create and analyse' and a daily routine of shared work and
study designed to instil self-discipline, teamwork, and co-operation
between industry and agriculture.
Rewi Alley's widening international reputation as a man close to the
needs of the ordinary Chinese was vital for the fund-raising needed to
maintain the school. This was achieved through bodies like CORSO and the
China Defence League headed by Madame Sun Yat-sen (Soong Ch’ing-ling), who
consistently supported Alley's work. Subsequently, he regarded his years
as headmaster of the Shandan Bailie school as the happiest and most
productive of his life. The school was maintained when the Communist Party
succeeded to power in 1949, but was increasingly controlled by local party
officials. In 1954 it was relocated to Lanchow (Lanzhou) and taken over by
the oil industry.
Because of his association with a communist regime, public opinion in
New Zealand was divided in its assessment of Alley’s activities, and from
1950 attitudes hardened towards him when he publicly identified himself
with opposition to American policy in the Korean War. As the Cold War
deepened, the familiar name of the man many New Zealanders had admired,
through such widely publicised ventures as the shipment of local sheep to
China, rarely appeared in newspaper coverage.
In 1952 Rewi Alley declined an invitation from Jawaharlal Nehru, the
prime minister of India, to establish village co-operatives there. He
settled in Peking (Beijing) in 1953 and travelled extensively within and
beyond China, propagandising on behalf of international peace committees,
especially the World Peace Council. In the following decade, and in his
capacity as secretary of the Asian--Pacific peace liaison committee in
Beijing, he visited Pyongyang, Havana, Stockholm, and Jakarta to speak at
international peace conferences.
During this period he became increasingly immersed in writing about
China, pamphleteering, and some less than memorable poetry. Among his 53
books, many of which were published in New Zealand, those describing his
philosophy and experience of co-operative education included Yo banfa!
; Sandan: an adventure in creative education ; and Fruition:
the story of George Alwin Hogg. In the 1950s he turned to translations
of early Chinese writers. An assiduous collector, he devoted more
attention to organising his major collection of artefacts, pottery and
works of art. This was subsequently housed at the Rewi Alley museum in
Shandan.
With the establishment of diplomatic relations between Wellington and
Beijing in 1972, Rewi Alley assumed importance for the New Zealand
government's Chinese policy. Previously - in 1960, 1965 and 1971 - he had
maintained a wide range of New Zealand contacts through brief return
visits, and in 1972 Victoria University of Wellington awarded him an
honorary doctorate in literature. In 1982 Beijing granted him honorary
citizenship, and his residence there was a pilgrimage point for thousands
of visiting New Zealanders. On the occasion of his 90th birthday David
Lange, then prime minister of New Zealand, publicly eulogised him. Shortly
afterwards, on 27 December 1987 at Beijing, Rewi Alley died. His ashes
were scattered over the Shandan countryside, in accordance with the
instructions in his will.
To China, Alley's most significant legacy was his faith in the
co-operative capacities of the ordinary Chinese. To compatriots, he
epitomised a practical and self-reliant humanitarianism which had its
roots in New Zealand.
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