Rewi Alley (known in China as 路易•艾黎, Lùyì Aìlí, 2 December 1897 – 27 December 1987) was a New Zealand-born writer and political activist. A member of the Chinese Communist Party, he dedicated 60 years of his life to the cause and was a key figure in the establishment of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives and technical training schools, including the Bailie Schools and Peili Vocational Institute (now Beijing Bailie University), both named after his mentor Joseph Bailie. Alley was a prolific writer about 20th century China, and especially the communist revolution. He also translated numerous Chinese poems.
Early life and influences Alley was born in the small town of Springfield, in inland Canterbury, New Zealand. He was named after Rewi Maniapoto, a Māori chief who famously resisted the British military during the New Zealand Wars in the 1860s. Alley's father, Frederick James Alley, was a teacher, and Rewi attended primary school at Amberley; then Wharenui School in Christchurch, where his father was appointed headmaster in 1905; and finally Christchurch Boys' High School. His mother, Clara Maria (née Buckingham), was a leader of the New Zealand women's suffrage movement. Alley wrote in his autobiography that his father was "a great believer in social progress, a socialist before his time" who adopted the Unitarian position in religion and did not allow his children to go to Sunday school because he did not want them to have beliefs forced upon them.
His parents' keen interest in social reform and education influenced all of their children: brother Geoff (1903–1986) became an All Black and worked as a travelling WEA (Workers' Educational Association) tutor sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, before becoming New Zealand's first National Librarian in 1964; sister Gwendolen (Gwen Somerset) (1894–1988) was a pioneer in primary school education practices, and president of the New Zealand Federation of Nursery Play Centres' Associations (Playcentre); younger sister Joyce (1908–2000) became a prominent nursing administrator; and brother Philip (1901–1978) was a lecturer at the engineering school of the University of Canterbury. He is credited with the idea of moving the university campus from central Christchurch to the suburb of Ilam. Rewi's elder brother, Eric, fought in WW1 in the Otago Regiment, NZEF, and rose to the rank of captain. He was fatally wounded in action and died on 17 June 1916, at the age of 23.
In 1916, Alley joined the New Zealand Army and was sent to serve in France, where he won the Military Medal. There, he met workers in the Chinese Labour Corps who had been sent to work for the Allied armies. During the war, he was injured and caught in no man's land. Lyall McCallum and another man rescued him and took him back to safety. After the war, Alley tried farming in New Zealand.
In 1927, he decided to go to China. He moved to Shanghai with thoughts of joining the Shanghai Municipal Police, but instead, he became a fire officer and municipal factory inspector. The duties exposed him to the poverty in the Chinese community and the racism in the Western communities. He joined a political study group whose members included Alec Camplin, George Hatem, Ruth Weiss, Trude Rosenberg, Heinz Schippe, Irene Wiedemeyer, Talitha Gerlach, Maud Russell, Lily Haass, Cora Deng and Cao Liang.
His politics turned from fairly-conventional right-wing pro-empire sentiments to thoughts of social reform. In particular, a famine in 1929 made him aware of the plight of China's villages. Using his holidays and taking time off work, Alley toured rural China helping with relief efforts. He adopted a 14-year-old Chinese boy, Duan Si Mou, whom he named Alan, in 1929.
After a brief visit to New Zealand, where Alan experienced public racism, Alley became Chief Factory Inspector for the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1932. By then, he was a secret member of the Chinese Communist Party and was involved in anti-criminal activities on behalf of the party. He adopted another Chinese son, Li Xue, whom he called Mike, in 1932. After the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937, Alley set up the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. He also set up schools, which he called Bailie Schools after his American friend Joseph Bailie.Borth, Christy. Masters of Mass Production, p. 112, Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1945. Edgar Snow wrote of Alley's work in the CIC: "Where Lawrence brought to the Arabs the distinctive technique of guerilla war, Alley was to bring China the constructive technique of guerilla industry...."Brady, Anne-Marie: Friend of China: The Myth of Rewi Alley (London; New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002): 30–33.
By 1941, Alley was one of the contacts of the Chinese Communist Party in the English-speaking world. Due to his purported knowledge of the Chinese way of war, Colonel Gordon Grimsdale of the Far East Combined Bureau interviewed him after being asked by Major-General Christopher Maltby (who recently assumed the post as General Officer Commanding Hong Kong) about recruiting more Hong Kong soldiers for local defence in face of the coming war. Alley, however, oversold his case. He "expressed the gravest doubts as to the efficacy of attempting to raise an infantry unit for purely local defence" because he did not "think suitable material [was] available either as leaders or for the rank and file", and questioned if the garrison had the time to train and equip such a unit. On the other hand, Alley was "extremely optimistic on the subject of starting a guerrilla unit for the indirect defence of the Colony", and proposed to send "a [suitably] equipped party to Canton to burn Japanese aeroplanes on the Canton aerodrome, or to destroy some important bridge(s)". Training would be carried out in Hong Kong, in the name of forming a labour battalion, and the soldiers should consist of those who were interned in Hong Kong. He stressed the importance of introducing "pro-Chinese" education for the soldiers and he proposed that "the best man he can suggest as the chief organizer is Yeh Chieh Ying (Ye Jianying)", a Cantonese Communist general.
In 1945, he became headmaster of the Shandan Bailie School after the death of George Hogg.
After communist victory Following the Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949, Alley was urged to remain in China and to work for the Chinese Communist Party. He produced many works praising the party and the government of the People's Republic of China, including Yo Banfa!, Man Against Flood and China's Hinterland in the Great Leap Forward. Some of his published works have historic interest. Although imprisoned and "struggled with" during the Cultural Revolution, Alley remained committed to communism and bore no grudges.
In 1963, Edgar Snow after the publication of his book The Other Side of The River: Red China Today, was described as an associate of Alley in a Sydney book review.
In 1973, New Zealand civil servant Gerald Hensley and the new New Zealand Ambassador to China, Bryce Harland, called on Alley.Hensley, Gerald: Final Approaches: A Memoir, page 171 (2006, Auckland University Press) "He was in his seventies, a bald, pink-faced man with bright blue eyes, and an inexhaustible flow of conversation. We sat and talked for most of an afternoon, with Rewi occasionally jumping up to fetch a book or check a point. He had, he said, lost the best of two libraries, once to the Japanese and again to the Red Guards, who had thrown out his collections and torn up his pictures in front of him. He was still bitter over their behaviour." He was living in the old Italian Legation, which had been converted into flats for the leading foreign friends of China, which were allocated on the "bleak basis" of seniority. On the death of the previous occupant Anna Louise Strong, Rewi moved downstairs into the best front apartment and everyone else moved on one place.
Unlike most of the friends of the Chinese Communist Party who remained in Beijing, Alley had little trouble travelling around the world, usually lecturing on the need for nuclear disarmament. The New Zealand government did not strip Alley of his passport and remained proud of his ties to important party leaders. In the 1950s, he is reported to have been offered a knighthood but turned the honour down.Stockwell, Foster: Westerners in China: A History of Exploration and Trade, Ancient Times Through the Present pg 187. McFarland, 2003. He supported the Communist North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He was appointed a Companion of the Queen's Service Order for community service in the 1985 New Year Honours. At the ceremony, New Zealand's Prime Minister, David Lange, made a moving and dramatic speech, turned to Alley at its conclusion and said with sincerity, "New Zealand has had many great sons, but you, Sir, are our greatest son."Mahon, David R. "Afternoons with Rewi Alley." North & South. October 2013: 50-7, 126-7. Print.
Death and legacy He died in Beijing on 27 December 1987. New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange eulogised him on his 90th birthday, just weeks before his death.
His house in Beijing is now the offices of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.
In 1996, Jack Body wrote an opera in three acts, "Alley", based on his life, with libretto by Geoff Chapple. It was performed at the International Festival of the Arts in Wellington in 1998.
Memorial at Springfield An extensive memorial to Rewi Alley has been erected at Springfield, Canterbury, New Zealand. It contains a large stone carving and a number of panels giving details of his life.
Rewi Alley Memorial Hall and Research Centre at Lanzhou City University College Opened in 2017 on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of Alley's birth is a three-story Rewi Alley Memorial Building. The memorial hall operates as a free public museum and is within the grounds of the Lanzhou City University Bailie Campus (the site of the former Bailie Oil School, the successor to Rewi Alley and George Hogg's Bailie Vocational School in nearby Shandan). The Memorial Hall contains an extensive and permanent display of Rewi Alley history and chronicles his contributions as an educator and internationalist in China. The hall is open at normal opening hours and can be found adjacent to the Rewi Alley bust at the Bailie Campus of the university.
Rewi Alley Memorial House in Shandan A replica of the home that Alley lived in when he was the headmaster of the original Shandan Bailie School has samples of Rewi's belongings and furniture, including a kang bed, tables, typewriter, books, and pictures of 1940s school life.
Views of China and New Zealand
Some of Alley's private conversations revealed his views on his birth and adopted countries: