China’s greatest living Kiwi

Press, 12 January 1981, Page 13

China’s greatest living Kiwi

To many, Rewi Alley is New Zealand’s most important expatriate. At 82, he has lived longer than any living Westerner in Chira, and he is unique in his experience of Chinese culture and society. Alley is one of the last “hundred percenters” — a survivor from a small group of foreigners who have worked since the 1930 s for China’s revolution. After moving from New Zealand to Shanghai in 1927, Alley worked to become fluent in Chinese dialects. Five years later he was the chief safety and factory inspector in. Shanghai, where, after witnessing labour and living conditions which ap-

i palled hinj, he became a , convinced Communist. Under the Japanese threat ’ in 1938, Allley headed a vast i project to! move Chinese in- : dustry f/rom the coastal i cities’to She interior; malting I the slogazi, “Gung Ho” — : “Work Itogether” — an • international by-word. Later, ? he was to run a • training [school for technical i skills ia remote Shandan, after wlj.ich he returned to writing./Alley has produced more Wian 30 books on : China’s# revolution, as well as volames of poetry and translations of Chinese poetry!'He) is still employed in journalism in Peking. Durimg April, May, and June, |1979, a New Zealand

(film crew headed by Geoff Steven accompanied Alley on : a 15,000 km journey through ; the places where he had lived and worked during the turbulent years of the revolution. This was one of the • most extensive trips undertaken in China by a foreign film crew. Assisted by Alley they have captured on film some of the human events which chart the radical changes making the China of today. Rewi Alley’s 50 years of struggle has become something of a legend. Here, he tells his own extraordinary story. “Gung Ho: Rewi Alley of China” screens again on Network Two tonight.