Gung Ho - Rewi Alley of China

Rewi Alley, 82, a legend known to millions within China. He arrived 20 years before the revolution, and 30 years after he lives in China still, a witness to the transformation of the Chinese spirit. And he's won a place within it.

– Narrator Peter Vere-Jones introduces Rewi Alley, early in this documentary

One half of Shanghai didn't know what the other half lived like. They had no idea, no conception. The foreigners would live in the French Concession or out in the Western part of Shanghai. They had absolutely no conception of what was happening in the slums of Shanghai at the other end.

– Rewi Alley describes the disparities within Shanghai, in part two

Comade Rewi Alley is a most sincere friend of the Chinese people. For more than 50 years, whether we were in difficulties in our pioneering days, or after the victory of our country, he has been constantly with us in suffering and in happiness. He sympathises with and supports our just struggle. He has done a great deal of work and made valuable contributions to the Chinese people.

– A Communist Party speaker during a ceremony at an industrial school which finally acknowledged that Rewi Alley had founded it

I had been reading about China in the Auckland Weekly News — about the only literature we got at that time — and said well I'll go and have a look at that revolution in China, and see what it's doing.

– Rewi Alley on where his interest in China began

The continual incredible exploitation of children, thrown up against this vast city — this city of great wealth: enormous fortunes being made. One millionaire after another coming out of Shanghai, and going back to spend his gains abroad. From out of this city, where such a great portion of the population lived in utter destitution and want.

– Rewi Alley on the wealth that was gathered through exploitative child labor practices in Shanghai, in part two

...Alley has a more intimate contact with Chinese life: industrial skills, a central interest of Alley’s since 1938 when he led a scheme to found thousands of Chinese industrial cooperatives. Alley once taught industrial skills to Chinese peasants. He founded this school 35 years ago . . . In 1966, during the anti-foreign moods of the Cultural Revolution, Rewi Alley was stripped of any association with this school. Today, a formal reinstatement by Communist Party speakers.

– Rewi Alley visits an industrial school whose current headmaster is his adopted son Alan (Duan Simou)