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Controversial new book on Rewi Alley
Published by the Communications and Development Department
25 October 2002
Who was the real Rewi Alley? A controversial new book by Canterbury University political scientist Dr Anne-Marie Brady aims to unravel the myth-making that has surrounded Alley, a New Zealander who for a good part of last century played a prominent role as a “friend of China”.
Friend of China – The Myth of Rewi Alley examines how Alley became iconised in his own life-time and a symbol of wide-ranging political objectives in both his adopted and native countries.
Brady says the book is not primarily a biography but an exercise in historical revisionism.
“There have been three book-length biographies, all written in Alley’s lifetime. All are useful in different ways but deeply flawed.
“Willis Airey’s A learner in China suffered from being severely censored by Alley; Geoff Chapple’s Rewi Alley of China is more honest but his close relationship with Alley prevented him from revealing everything he knew; and Alley’s own book At 90: Memoirs of my China Years is a pastiche of carefully selected excerpts of the author’s writing.”
Brady’s book examines more closely Alley, the man and his lifestyle. For example, the myth was that he never married because of a failed love affair; in reality, Shanghai gave him the freedom to explore his homosexuality with other expatriates and the Chinese. He lived for many years with an English engineer Alec Camplin, and they both adopted Chinese orphans. Brady also looks at the contrast between Alley’s personal beliefs and those he publicly exposed, and his reasons for going to China - to be a mercenary - which is completely left out of the other biographies on him.
“In Alley’s long and eventful life, a web of often conflicting myths was constructed by Alley and others in order to present him as an iconic symbol,” Brady said.
“However, to say that Alley was mythologised does not take away from his actual achievements in China: in Shanghai as a factory inspector, in the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives and at the Shandan Bailie School in the 1940s, and in the 1980s, the strength of vision which saw him working to re-establish the co-operative movement and the Shandan Bailie School.
“To assess the value of his work as propagandist for the Chinese government is more difficult, and perhaps worthy of further study. Nonetheless, most myths have some basis in reality, no matter how remote, and the Rewi Alley myth is no different.”
• Friend of China – The Myth of Rewi Alley, by Dr Anne-Marie Brady, published by Routledge Curzon, 234mm x 156 mm, 224 pages, hardcover, 25 b/w illustrations.
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