Through A Hard School

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32304, 23 May 1970, Page 4

Through A Hard School

A Learner in China. By Willis Airey. Carton Press and the Monthly Review Society. 291 pp. (Illustrated). This biography of Rewi Alley by the late Professor Airey consolidates our knowledge of the career of one of the most remarkable New Zealanders. It is good to be reminded of Rev-i Alley’s earthy New Zealandness of origin—soldier in World War I, returned-soldier, settler for six years in the Taranaki backblocks and then traveller to China

in a spirit of mixed curiosity and discontent. It is salutary too to be reminded of the bad conditions he encountered

in Shanghai in the twenties in his work in fire and factory inspection, and of the vulnerability of the Chinese people still to famine and flood, and, within a few years, to Japanese invasion. After the struggle with Japan had begun. Rewi Alley felt he could do something personally to help, resigned his Shanghai appointment in 1935, and became the moving spirit in setting up Indusco (or Gung Ho), the co-operative movement which played a vital part in the war. Putting refugees to work and rescuing plant and machinery ahead of the Japanese armies enabled thousands of small-scale enterprises to supply both army and civilians with blankets, clothing, medical supplies and consumer goods. It incidentally fostered the village industry China needed in peace or war.

An offshoot of Indusco was education and social welfare—training centres, creches, hospitals, orphanages. In 1945 when George Hogg died, Rewi Alley had to take over full responsibility for the Bailie school at Sandan in northwest China, not long transferred from a less secure area. (Bailie was a mis-

sionary teacher with a practical bias.) This technical school handled everything from textiles to coal-mining, teaching pottery, glass-blowing, papennaking, tanning and working with metals. In 1947 it had 400 students and another 200 instructors or helpers, producing a substantial part of its own cost by agriculture (some support came from the co-operatives, some from foreign sympathisers: New Zealanders will rememb< the famous sheep)-. Rewi Alley remained until 1952 in control of this

vigorous enterprise, in 1949 thankfully bowing out the corrupt and inefficient Kuomintang.

The last phase of Rewi Alley’s career is less closely documented. Visits to conferences all over the world are mentioned and the publication of numerous books. At Sandan, Rewi Alley had often been obstructed by an unsympathetic Kuomintang, but it is the present government which removed him from the field in which he had proved himself so abundantly. A man pre-eminently practical, it is questionable whether he is as well equipped for his present role of writer and “peace worker”—in plain terms, propagandist—in spite of his uncouth but appealing poems. As James Bertram pu' it to Rewi in 1956, “It’s those violent books you write.” Rewi’s defence was that his writings were meant for Asian readers rather than New Zealanders.

There is sincerity and modesty in this account appropriate to its subject. Professor Airey makes clear his sense of the virtues of the New China. The title is explained tn the book’s last sentence “. . . people can learn from Rewi Alley, as Rewi Alley has learned throughout his life from the people of China.”