Rewi Alley’s Profound Sentiments for China in His Late Years In Memory of the 11

Twenty years have flashed by since Ai Lao (as we affectionately addressed the revered old Rewi Alley) passed away.

For his 60 years of life in China since 1927, he was a witness and a participant of our revolution and reconstruction, sharing weal and woe with our people.His China experiences were legendary and unique to ordinary folk in other countries. His outstanding contributions have won him profound love and esteem of all Chinese. With the lapse of time, old stories might fade out of current life, but fond memories of this great New Zealander’s friends and acquaintances may emit sparks rejuvenating their lives.

On the eve of commemorating the 110th anniversary of Rewi Alley’s birth and 20th anniversary of his passing, I searched out my work diaries of 20 years ago, and was surprised to find that in the Beidaihe and Hainan holidays between 1982 and 1985 when Ai Lao was invited to relate an oral history for his autobiography, he frequently “slipped away” from his own stories to current China affairs. As my chief attention was focused on stories of his past, I never really appreciated the significance of those hard-thinking remarks.Ai Lao did not care much for his autobiography, and would rather use the time to write more about China. The digressions were actually an unconscious revelation of his profound sentiments for the land of his adoption.

At that time Rewi Alley mainly concerned himself with ecological environment, natural disasters, youth education and social security in China. He regarded these issues deserving top attention for all Chinese on the way to a sustainable development, and he would not sit aside to watch without giving advices.

Since the early 1980s, Ai Lao’s health was failing as a result of repeated heart attacks and skin cancer operations. However, he insisted on continuing with his annual tours to different places particularly to where he had worked before, to the construction sites of big water projects, or areas recently hit by floods or earthquakes. The policies of reform and opening-up, of setting things to right and shifting the focus of work to economic development gave him much inspiration and rekindled his enthusiasm to do more in China. But the after-effects of the “cultural revolution” and the new problems arising from opening to the West also began to worry him with fear that various evils might take chance to cause detours in China’s future development. Each time he came back from the interior, he would write to the authorities concerned, giving his personal views or criticisms. He reported that the destruction of forests in Hainan was getting worse as people even cut hard wood into pieces for firewood, and that tree felling was still going on near the Songtao Reservoir in Wuzhi Mountain area so that a disaster would strike the peasants in case of flood brought by torrential rain which might damage the dyke and the narrow spillway. When he visited the Hongshui River hydro-power station in Guangxi Province, he found the silt was causing increasing danger to the generators. He was told that new materials had already been found to prevent the abrasion of the blades of the turbine, so there should be no problem.But he felt this was only a partial solution, because all rivers had their own history and everything had its own law, men must handle things based on their own law.He also warned the local government be on the alert of pests in large areas of the pine forests in Guangxi, and suggested eggs of pine caterpillar birds be imported immediately to save the trees, as the spreading of pests would result in new soil erosion, bringing tremendous economic losses.

In the last year of Rewi Alley’s life, his poor health no longer allowed him to travel except going to Beidaihe beach for the summer vacation. While he was there, he learned that discussions on the Three Gorges Project on the Yangtze River were going on. He hurried to write a report soon after his return to Beijing, stressing that controlling a big river like the Yangtze is not easy and simple, any disaster may cause a super big flood, destroying the Gezhouba Dam and possibly change the river course to the sea via the Dongting and Poyang Lakes, flooding all the cities and factories on the way.... He added that the imbalanced ecological conditions in Sichuan region existed for years. The excessive logging in the upper reaches of the Yangtze was making the erosion from bad to worse. Rewi Alley was not an expert on water conservancy. His views might come only from personal experiences, but his anxiety revealed his true love for China. In the event, his knowledge and deliberations on China’s natural and social environmental problems as a sincere “learner and doer” in China over six decades are a valuable part of the legacy he left to the Chinese people.

Another concern of Rewi Alley’s was the education of youth and the change of social values towards seeking personal fame and wealth since the 1980s. Once he saw in Hainan several boys gather together, whipping a young tree like mad, apparently imitating what they saw from the films of gang violence. He feared once the youth were misled as such, they might grow up to be a great threat to the whole society. He did not like young people swarming to go abroad with the sole aim of acquiring a gilded title, taking academic degree as the supreme purpose of study.He was also reluctant to accept the fact that some old revolutionary cadres tolerated their children seeking individual fortune. In 1982 when he was asked to speak at the meeting in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Shandan Bailie School, he made the following remarks: “To be a youth in today’s China is vastly superior to being one anywhere else in the world. Nowhere is there so great a challenge, nowhere is work on so great a scale, nowhere does the creativeness of the individual, the strength of the group matter so much.”“The very fact that China has suffered from millennia of deforestation and erosion, with rivers silting up, posing a constant threat to millions, makes for man-sized problems that call for big man to solve them. How then does one become a big man? Not by any political trickery, nor by trying to make friends in high places, but by ever struggling to gain the objective view, training oneself, gathering knowledge and experience, learning how to work in cooperation with others, retaining the humility of Zhou Enlai in the face of immense tasks that have to be done. A big man is not proud or arrogant. He is simple and thoughtful, building on one reality after another, so that the basis for his thinking is solid, and he develops character and directness.... It does not matter whether you are called to high position or just keep on with an ordinary one; to be really big will benefit not only yourself but also those with whom you come in contact.” These words carried such great weight, reminding the young people not to be self-content only by seeking endlessly a comfortable material life, while forgetting to raise consistently one’s spiritual ethos.

The greatest satisfaction to Rewi Alley in his late years was the revival of Gung Ho (Chinese industrial cooperatives) and the Shandan Bailie School (SBS). He had waited for the fruition of this dream for over 30 years since they stopped functioning in 1951. He thought the two causes which contributed to the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and served the poor in wartime could have continued to play a positive role in China’s reconstruction. To his disappointment, the school had to move to Lanzhou and became a technical oil school under the Ministry of Oil Industry, while the Association of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (ACIC)―the leading organ of Gung Ho, was incorporated into the All-China Federation of Cooperatives and the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (ICCIC, or, the Gung Ho International Committee) i.e. the overseas support organization of Gung Ho, ceased to operate. From then on, Gung Ho and SBS disappeared from the sight of the public. However, Rewi Alley and his old colleagues still believed that in socialist China, the Gung Ho movement which advocates the value of fairness, justice and democracy among people, and the SBS for training practical young technicians through education of integrating study with production, could continue to benefit the Chinese people and serve China’s modernization in the new era. After the implementation of the policy of reform and opening to the outside world, with the support of the Central government and the Gansu provincial government as well as Gung Ho enthusiasts at home and abroad , ACIC was successfully reorganized in 1983, and ICCIC and SBS, resumed activities in 1987.

Rewi Alley’s achievements through selfless dedication and painstaking efforts won him worthy reputation in his later years. He was well-known as a writer, poet, social activists, historian, archaeologist, educator, Father of Gung Ho and bridge-builder of China-New Zealand friendship. He was awarded the Queen’s Service Order for Community Service and conferred the title of Honorary Citizen of Beijing and Gansu Province as well as honorary academic degrees of New Zealand Universities. On December 2, 1977, Deng Xiaoping who reappeared in public life as vice premier for the first time after the “cultural revolution”, addressed him as “our veteran fighter, old friend, and old comrade-in-arms” at the banquet celebrating his 80th birthday. Deng said, “Thousands upon thousands of foreign friends have helped the cause of the Chinese revolution. It is no easy thing to have done so much for the Chinese people as Comrade Rewi Alley has done constantly for half a century, whether in the years when we faced difficulties and adversity, in the years when we fought for the triumph of our revolution, or in the years since victory was won in our revolution. It is only natural that he enjoys the respect of the Chinese people.” These words exemplifying the high esteem the Chinese government and people have for Rewi Alley’s whole life in this country.

Rewi Alley enjoyed a happy and fruitful life as an old friendship envoy of the New Zealand people. As long residing guest living in the CPAFFC compound, his daily life and work were well looked after by specially assigned CPAFFC staff. His moral integrity, down-to-earth working style and simple living have deeply appealed to all those working beside him. Beginning from the 1980s, to fulfill his grand wish, the CPAFFC facilitated the shipping of his collection of nearly 4,000 pieces of Chinese cultural relics to Shandan as a souvenir to his second home. The growing interest of knowing Rewi Alley’s life stories led to the decision of setting up a Rewi Alley Research Office in the CPAFFC by its late President Wang Bingnan which helped arrange his archives and materials for his autobiography and handle the requests made by his Chinese and foreign visitors.His rich collection of books was finally sent to the library of Renmin University of China in Beijing for public use. After all this was accomplished and a grand celebration of his 90th birthday held, he suddenly passed away on December 27, 1987.

A lot of people tried to guess the reason why Rewi Alley never married. In fact it was not his deliberate choice to remain single. Several female friends of different nationalities admired and adored him for his virtue and talents, yet to him, having like minds did not mean taking the same way of life. They eventually remained to be his devoted friends for the rest of his life. Once he did think of getting married with a girl of his heart, but the thoughts that in revolution getting married to have a family and children would hinder one’s progress made him hesitate. In addition, he felt having a family without rejoicing with its members would give him a guilty conscience. Year in year out, time showed itself. However, it did not mean Rewi Alley had no family life all those years. He adopted two orphans Alan and Mike during his relief work respectively for the Inner Mongolia draught in 1929 and the Honghu flood in 1932. He brought them up in Shanghai till they finished their middle school education, and then sent them to Yan’an to join the revolution.While in Shandan, he took over the responsibility of looking after the four Nie brothers whom George Hogg adopted in Baoji after their father fled to Yan’an and their mother died of illness.He fostered Deng Bangzhen, nephew of the famous revolutionary martyr Deng Zhongxia, till he completed his schooling in the Central Academy of Fine Arts and later created conditions for him to get married and start his career. These boys and their wives and children made up Rewi Alley’s “big Chinese family”, giving him tremendous warmth and joy as he advanced in age. Moreover, the hundreds of alumni of the old Shandan Bailie School would bring him glad tidings of their successes in different fields of work, a big comfort to their beloved headmaster. In his poem Home written on October 25, 1977, Rewi Alley described his life in Beijing:

I look at the old Yixing teapot,

the blue cup and saucer, the

plates from Jingdezhen each

morning, and smile, home is a place

where bits and pieces one has loved,

collect; where friends and family

come around, making walls echo

with sounds of laughter; where flowers

grow, and where too, determination

is wedded to daily living, where folk

from Oceania, the Americas, and too

some from Europe, come for talk;

the place that is the base for travels

into the hinterland; ever a comforting

thought that it is there in its

quiet compound of trees that leap

into life each spring, and fill

each autumn with golden radiance,

A kindly home is this

that China has given me,

How can I thank her more?

For Rewi Alley, the basic tenet of his philosophy is “to give” and not “to take”, hence he remained calm, never overjoyed or scared in favorable or adverse circumstances. His dedication to promoting well-being of the Chinese people was voluntary and unreserved, never expecting any reward. He felt content from “to give”, kept pursuing his goal even if he was misunderstood, and continued to invigorate himself by overcoming all difficulties. In answering the question put by some youths: “Why did you stay in China?” Rewi Alley said, “China gave me aim to life, a cause to fight for, each year more richly; a place in the ranks of the advancing millions; how great a thing has this been, what bigger reward could one imagine than that which has come to me, and now sustains!” Perhaps today some people may take Rewi Alley as an “idealist” of his times, in fact, he was a most practical and down-to-earth man of action. All his life long contribution was to do something beneficial and substantial for the ordinary Chinese people. To this end, he made a great deal of personal sacrifices, withstood all kinds of political pressure and risked his life while workingfor Gung Ho despite war turmoil and attacks by infectious diseases, till the dawn of aNew China. Today, when wereminiscence his noble sentiments, his magnanimous internationalist spirit, his wisdom and foresight, we feel as if some fresh air were purifying our soul, and encouraging us to improve ourselves in pursuit of higher values of human life.

(August 18, 2007)