Rewi Alley: Elspeth Sandys' new biography of 'Uncle Rewi'

Rewi Alley has been the subject of four major biographies but the latest by Elspeth Sandys is surely the most distinctive, showing him through a personal lens. It is there in the title, A Communist in the Family; searching for Rewi Alley. 

A Communist in the Family is the latest examination of Rewi Alley, this time from a family perspective. Photo: None

His life has been well charted already. He was wounded in World War One, then came a failed attempt at farming in Taranaki. Chastened, he headed to Shanghai in 1927, to become a firefighter and inspector of factories. Appalled by the conditions and corruption, he became a Communist sympathiser. He was part of a talented generation of observers and activists like New Zealander James Bertram, American writers Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley. When Japan invaded China, he helped establish industrial co-ops, raising money overseas and shifting factories inland out of the reach of the Japanese; its slogan, Gung Ho, entered the English language. In 1942, he joined his English friend George Hogg at a school west of Xi’an, then shifted it further into the interior. After years crisscrossing China, Alley acquired an international reputation and a knowledge of the country few foreigners could. 

Sandys, the novelist, tells a more personal tale. She grew up believing Alley was “Uncle Rewi”, and though it later transpired she was adopted she can place him in a family of spirited and persuasive characters. She weaves together her story in three ways. First is the chronological story. But at key moments Sandys pauses to flesh out themes or introduce characters like his friend the beguiling Soong Chingling, widow of Dr Sun Yatsen, or his adopted children Mike, Li Xue, and Alan, Duan Simou. Sandys’ interventions mean when we are well-prepared to understand crucial moments in Alley’s life.

Elspeth Sandys Photo: Helen Mitchell

 But also running through the story are scenes from an official tour by the busload of “Alley whanau” to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary since he set foot in Shanghai. Sandys captures the boredom, the exasperation and the hustle of bus tours, as well as the kindly meant but endless official speeches. There are some lovely moments like when the whanau pause in a secluded valley to practice their waiata for the next memorial. It takes a while for this device, shifting between Alley the man and Alley the memorial, to work. But it is particularly powerful when Alley and his busload of whanau decades later reach Shandan, the first site of Alley’s Bailie School, then on to Lanzhou. These are places loved by Alley yet Sandys admits she struggled to find him. “Houses that have become museums, statues that sanitize the blood, sweat and tears of real life – is this why I remain unmoved....” 

Sandys is at her novelist best describing scenes from his life. She describes Alley arriving in Shanghai and walking through the city marveling at its life – and poverty. There are the expat parties of dancing, politics and plotting. And his friend George Hogg feverish with typhus collapsing on the road only to be picked up by the New Zealand nurse Kathleen Hall, who he believes to be an angel. The book has extensive footnotes but at times you want to know more of where the detail came from. Did Alley really ponder the war effort as he walked home from a meeting of his friends (and WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood) in a Wuhan bar? At times, I wanted to hear Alley’s own first-hand description.  

Rewi Alley teaching at Shandan School, Gansu, China 1940s [Alexander Turnbull Library] Photo: New Zealand-China Friendship Society

Sandys is also very good at exploring family lore, stopping the narrative to include recollections of Alley doing something, yet admitting the dates or historical details don’t seem to match up. She quotes Michael Ondaatje who was challenged by his family about why he revealed bad things in his autobiographical books. He said that he simply printed the best stories.  

But there is one area where Sandys diverges sharply from recent historical works and that is whether Alley was gay. The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Te Ara, says Alley was “almost certainly homosexual”. Professor Anne-Marie Brady has made the case he was attracted to Shanghai by its sexual freedoms, that he was able to have a family, something blocked to him at home, and that he concealed his homosexuality to keep fundraising in the West but after 1949 when the new Communist rulers came to power he was caught between their rigid discipline or a prudish disapproval in New Zealand. Sandys utterly disagrees. She says he was rendered impotent when he was wounded in the thigh in WW1 and that there were whispering campaigns all his life to discredit him. A person’s sexual orientation shouldn’t matter, she tells one family member. “Except it did back then,” he replies.

One of the difficulties for Alley biographers is his last four decades in Beijing. Alley settled into writing and giving speeches as a peace ambassador under the eye of the Party. He and the pre-war group found themselves caught between Western mistrust of communism and China’s controlling Party leaders. Alley lived through the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Famine, but almost never spoke out against their excesses. “So he kept his head down. Toed the line. China was still finding its feet. Criticisms from a yang guizi (foreigner) would not be appreciated.” Acknowledgement of the catastrophes later were “too little, too late”.

Rewi Alley with Chinese friends and family, 1983 [Alexander Turnbull Library] Photo: New Zealand-China Friendship Society

But these were also the years that would see him as a touchstone for visiting leaders from Trudeau Senior to Whitlam and even Muldoon who he rather liked. His mana and stoicism were no doubt part of the reason for New Zealand’s ability to forge relationships with China. 

But there is also unhappiness here. His adopted sons were imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. Mike’s children, Mao Mao and Bao Bao, emigrated to America, a country Alley disliked. The split with Bao Bao was especially acrimonious; she accused him of selfishness, says Sandys, refusing to believe he was powerless to help during the difficult years. Mike’s family broke contact. While the story of the Kiwi Alley whanau is captured so well by Sandys, there may yet be another Alley whanau story to be told.