The Culture of
Christchurch City
REWI ALLEY named China’s top 10 Friend
New Zealander educator Rewi Alley has been named as one of China’s top ten international friends for “making exceptional contributions to the country in the past 100 years.”
China Radio International (CRI) ran an Internet poll to select the top ten which included
- Canadian doctor Norman Bethune who died during the Sino-Japanese War,
- German John Rabe who rescued 250,000 Chinese during the Nanjing Massacre and
- International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch Toriello who supported China’s Olympic bid.
CRI says Rewi Alley went to China 80 years ago out of curiosity.
Born in Springfield, Canterbury, Alley went to China in 1927 and stayed.
David Somerset, Alley’s nephew, told CRI that Alley was a man who would do great things in China.
“However, he came from a family that had very strict ideas about the way you should lead your life,” Somerset said.
“For them, life was very serious business. You didn’t tackle it lightly. You endeavoured and tried to form the world. You had to go out and help people instead of doing nothing.”
In 1942, Alley set up the Bailie School in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province to train technical workers.
To avoid bombings by the Japanese, the school was later moved to isolated Shandan County in northwest China’s Gansu Province where it became the renowned Shandan Bailie School and trained many technical workers for New China.
Liu Guozhong, Vice President of the Shandan Bailie School, said, everyone in Shandan County knows Rewi Alley and adores him.
“No matter if you are in the countryside or cities in China, when talking about Alley, everyone knows that he was involved in the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Movement and the Shandan Bailie School.”
CRI said Alley was, for a time, treated as a traitor by the New Zealand government.
But his family members and friends in New Zealand did not abandon him and established the New Zealand China Friendship Society.
Eric Livingstone, past president of the society, said thanks to Alley the relationship between China and New Zealand has become quite intimate.
“We have been proud to meet major Chinese leaders before they went to other European countries,” Livingstone said. “We think it is because Rewi left the legacy of saying we are friends. So I think he has always been our great hero.”
Judy Livingstone, Eric Livingstone’s wife, was also in charge of the friendship society. Both of them are retired and work at the organisation for free.
“Because we like the Chinese people and Rewi Alley inspired us, we would like the people of the two countries to be closer,” Livingstone said.
Alley died in Beijing in 1987.
Others on the top ten list included
- Edgar Snow, an American journalist who wrote “Red Star over China” in the 1930s to make the Chinese Red Army world famous;
- Dr. Joseph Needham, a British scientist who spent some 50 years writing a milestone masterpiece “Science and Civilization in China”, Poland-born Chinese citizen Israel Epstein,
- Indian doctor Kwarkanath Kotnis,
- Thai princess Maha Chakri Sirindhom
- Morihiko Hiramatsu of Japan.
By MICHAEL FIELD 8, Dec 09 2009
New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange met Rewi Alley in 1985
His comments are as follows.
“A legend in his own lifetime” said Prime Minister David Lange after meeting Rewi in 1985. He was a man of real energy and strong convictions who wanted to help change the social order. At the same time a very practical man who strove to bring a better life to the ordinary Chinese person. Today there are closer ties between New Zealand and China. In spite of great differences in size, history, culture and values, it is now possible for both nations to appreciate, understand, and learn from each other: a great opportunity due in no small way to the dedicated life of Rewi Alley.
