China - NZ and the legacy of Rewi Alley

Kia ora koutou e te whānau

I’m back home and very much enjoying our wonderful place, but I want to share some of my adventures in China with you while they’re fresh.

“Unravelling the legacy of Rewi Alley” was our tour theme: “explore the essence of Rewi Alley, unearth China’s historical treasures and embrace its modern marvels”. A group of 10 current principals, Amanda Wright as our International Student Director and Allison Rosanowski as Selwyn Sister Cities convenor (and former DHS principal who set up our relationship with a Chinese sister school 26 years ago), our tour was organised and largely funded by the Chinese government and Beijing Language and Culture University.

Who is Rewi Alley? A Springfield-born Cantabrian pākeha fella, in the early 20th century Alley was a bit of a misfit here with socialist parents and a name from a Māori chief. He went to war and came back with a medal and injuries; he farmed his allocated land in Taranaki in desperate times, so he went off to explore China and seemed to really find himself. Rewi Alley initially helped bring in safer working conditions for factory workers in the cities, then organised large scale cooperatives in rural areas to help the Chinese to defend themselves against the attacking Japanese; he then took these skills into education and set up schools with a theme of “learn with hands and mind / create and analyse”. There are epic tales around all of these. Rewi Alley found himself a friend of the Chinese Communist Party, and Chairman Mao personally, and became revered by the Chinese people last century. He isn’t forgotten today, with numerous statues, galleries and - most importantly - schools using his educational philosophy.

We were hit by heat, humidity and scale as we disembarked at Beijing. City and motorway traffic is nothing new but for those of us who haven’t travelled for a while, or who held old-fashioned views of China, this was different: densely packed, new and flash vehicles with many beautiful EVs which aren’t available here. Traffic became a study of its own as we got into the city, as we noted how bikes, trikes, scooters, cars, trucks, buses and pedestrians just flowed around each other without our familiar rules but also without our familiar road rage.

The Beijing Language and Culture University (BCLU) provided a perfect start to our tour: firstly two amazing Chinese bilingual guides who we called Cynthia and James, then teaching us some basic Chinese language to get us going, followed by calligraphy, our first banquet, tea tasting and etiquette, and traditional painting lessons. BLCU students roamed around their lush grounds on bikes and we enjoyed the feeling of academia and hospitality. Our guides took us for a walk around the Beijing Olympic park on the way back to our hotel, where we were again blown away by the scale of cutting-edge buildings such as the “bird nest” to house the events (I was drawn to the curling venue of course). Exercise is commonly done in public places in China and we witnessed lessons for young athletes in speed skating - so serious, so diligent and so talented, there’s no doubt that China will continue to grow in international sporting status.

Our first symposium was with the Chinese Ministry of Education where we exchanged speeches about language, cooperation and Rewi Alley via interpreters. We visited an incredible museum of Chinese history, using super technology to bring a vastly rich 2,000 year timeline to life. The New Zealand Embassy in Beijing took us for a tour and hosted a meeting about international students and exchanges. What a stunning place, with a beautifully carved whare including a pounamu touch-stone from Arahura on our West Coast. None of us were missing home yet, but this visit was a special and proud connection with our own land.

Some more sightseeing took us to the Beijing CBD, where brands such as Apple and Nike have massive stores alongside luxury EVs and some traditional food outlets (I’m sure it was a novelty for locals too, but one stocked a range of insects - including scorpions - for consumption by the brave which didn’t include me). I was fascinated by the guys on motorised trikes carrying piles of rental bikes, the police vehicles which were like Chinese-brand G-Wagons, and the way people moved around so safely in the CBD. Safety from crime was a notable feature of China, with cameras everywhere and a good police presence. It meant we could wander and be relaxed with valuables in a way we wouldn’t do in other world cities including our own.

I was keen to look after my health, so I started most mornings with running in the beautiful parks and joining the locals in outdoor exercise. I love being in foreign places so it was very satisfying to be out for 40 minutes at a time without seeing a single other Westerner - conversation was limited but hand gestures (and a translation app) made it work.

“I’m standing on the Great Wall of China” isn’t something I’d ever expected to say, but there we were. One of the great wonders of the world, and an incredible experience for all of us, we climbed steep and ancient stairs and learnt about the role of the wall in keeping out enemy horsemen. Each of the 2,000 or so stairs we climbed was a different height so that enemies were likely to trip over in the event of attack. My teaching background is Geography, Tourism and Outdoor Ed so I was in my element. The view of Beijing from the top showed the vast scale of this city of 25 million people, covering 140,000 square kilometres.

The historical treasures continued with a guided tour of the Emperor's Summer Palace. Suzie, our guide, had an encyclopaedic knowledge to share: guides here are trained and assessed before they can be licensed. This ensures that history is shared respectfully and tourists get a high quality experience, something I think we should learn from. As well as awe at the size and beauty of the Summer Palace, I felt a bit of a sense of injustice for the common Chinese people who had been displaced by the dynasty for such a creation. This was long before Rewi Alley’s time but his work had all been about supporting working Chinese people to have better lives and in the long history of China prior to the 20th century it is clear that there had been massive inequalities between rich and poor.

After more feasting on beautiful Chinese food, we attended an opening ceremony with BCLU and a video link to the Chinese consulate in Christchurch who had supported our journey. Christchurch Boys High School also had a touring group and joined us (Rewi Alley had attended CBHS). Harry Romana of Mairehau High School gave our formal address in te reo Māori, a challenge for our interpreters but well appreciated by the hosts, followed by waiata from us, a further speech setting out our connections by Allison Rosanowski, a speech in Chinese and a haka from CBHS students. The genuine warmth and respect from our Chinese hosts was palpable and consistent throughout our tour.

Our education continued with visits to the Chinese Museum of Natural History, which houses massive dinosaur fossils, a moa skeleton from our own Aotearoa, and graphic human evolution sections. Tiananmen Square next, in searing heat, and no words or photos can convey the scale of this place. The buildings around the square are vast - The Hall of the People for example, with 56 columns to represent the 56 Chinese ethnicities, and seating for 10,000 people. Just over the road, we entered the Forbidden City (along with thousands of Chinese domestic tourists). We were in awe again as we witnessed the absolute wealth of former emperors, in stunning buildings with amazing details. This vast palace had been built exclusively for one emperor, at a time when peasants would have been doing it tough. Although this was before Alley’s time, it was inequalities like this that drove the Chinese cultural revolution that he supported.

I’d been looking forward to visiting technology companies and iFLYTEK, an AI (that’s artificial intelligence) specialist, generously showed us around their exhibition space. I’m a bit old-fashioned and I enjoy human intelligence but seeing AI decode students’ handwritten answers, analyse it and provide constructive feedback, offers a tempting glimpse of positive applications. This was one of the more mundane offerings but excited us the most!

Education has a high priority in China and our visit to Beijing No.101 Middle School revealed an attitude from teachers, backed by resourcing, that really made our group of principals think: we entered a huge, round, teaching space which had an open classroom at the centre/front and theatre seats all around, with cameras and microphones set up to record the class. Teachers take turns to teach in this space - the lesson is recorded and used for reflection, while colleagues use their non-contacts to attend, observe and provide feedback. A culture of striving for improvement, and hard work, is ingrained in China. This applies to students, too, who work huge hours to ensure they get grades for their choice of university. This isn’t all good, though, as pressure and fatigue do drive problems with teens’ health. To me, this points to one of the challenges we face when our politicians start comparing “achievement” between countries - they are not considering the culture that lies behind the grades. By all means they could discuss culture, as this is even more important, but you really need to see it to believe it.

Back to the airport and we flew 2.5 hours out west, to Zhangye in Gansu. This is where our Sister Schools are based, in Shandan, and we were treated royally as soon as we arrived. Local government and education VIPs hosted a beautiful banquet and speeches with an introduction to the local culture of toasting.

Rewi Alley, and his friend/colleague George Hogg, are remembered with an impressive monument and garden here. We joined our Chinese colleagues in placing flowers on each man’s stone and in acknowledging their contribution to Chinese society and the NZ-China relationship.

We were then taken around a serene modern library, with scripts going back over a thousand years and Saturday classes for students (we got to waiata a reply to their song). Rewi Alley really is treasured here: our next two stops were a replica of a house he used to live in here, filled with original furniture and photos (including one of our tour leader and former DHS principal Allison Rosowski), and a huge museum dedicated to his life which was fronted with a larger-than-life statue and filled with just some of the Chinese artefacts he’d been gifted which he donated.

Darfield Primary School was invited to set up a Sister relationship with a local school in Shandan, based on the relationship with Selwyn, so we had a tour which we’d expected to just be the buildings as it was a Saturday. But no! There were many students on site, many of whom had just attended because we were coming but some were there to study. Paper-cutting and calligraphy are traditional art-forms these young students were diligently pursuing and sharing with us. This was a mid-sized school of about 3,500 students!

I was excited to arrive at the Bailey Vocational College, one of two joint schools (about 7,500 students) forming our Sister School . The scale of the buildings was amazing and the respect they pay to Rewi Alley, as founder, says a lot about their culture. The school has an impressive display about their history which we were guided through, and here we found a photo of Allison Rosanowski signing the initial agreement 26 years ago, then James Morris in the meantime.

I was there to rekindle our schools’ friendship and it was fitting to do so alongside Allison. I presented their principal with a special gift of a Māori traditional weapon called a tewhatewha. The kaiwhakairo / carver of the tewhatewha was Joe Murray (Te Whānau ā Apanui) who gave it freely in the spirit of manaakitanga/ kindness between the world's peoples. It carries high mana / respect and signifies the joining of our people with one face being theirs and one face being ours. It connects earth and sky so that we may be far apart but joined together. I read a Chinese poem:

Dan Yuan ren chang jiu, qianlī qongchanjuān

但愿人长久，千里共婵娟

Wishing a person a long life no matter how far away they are.

The gift was very well received by their principal Mr Peng and the experience of meeting with our Sister School was a highlight of the trip for me. I can see real benefit to our students and community in maintaining this relationship, learning about Rewi Alley and Shandan county, and exchanging cultural experiences.

While I could now relax, it was the turn of our other principals to meet their proposed Sister Schools and, after an amazing visit to a senior school campus where we were mobbed by smiling students excited to see foreigners, we took part in a large meeting between many school and government officials. It was great to see the schools in our kāhui ako - Greendale, Windwhistle, Sheffield, Springfield and Darfield - strike relationships with primary schools in Shandan county of Gansu province. These schools are way bigger than ours, many over 3,000, but their interest in us and cultural connections is deeper than size of school.

We were treated to more sightseeing, with the rainbow rocks of Danxia landforms, then another flight to Dunhuang where we saw 2,000 year old caves containing art work and Buddhist sculptures. These had survived the Chinese Cultural Revolution, thankfully, which saw many religious relics destroyed in an attempt to purge the past. Understandable, in the context of the huge wealth and poverty we’d learnt about, but a shame that such a rich past had been destroyed in many places. Not here though, and we were once again in awe of things like a 35.5m high Buddha built inside a cave carved from sandstone 1,300 years ago and a Buddha lying down with 76 disciples all displaying different emotions.

We squeezed in a Buddhist temple, an incredible dance/play show which told the story of the caves with modern technology in a purpose-built theatre, and ended the day with sunset at massive dunes around a famous oasis. While some of our team took the camel ride, I enjoyed climbing the 100m high dunes with friends and running back down like a child with our Chinese guide James.

Another flight and it was back to business at Lanzhou where I had the honour of supporting my friend Harry Romana of Mairehau High School in signing their Sister School agreement. We were warmly welcomed by their students and I loved their attention to detail, such as arranging their globes so that NZ faced us. A further symposium at Lanzhou City University explored more of our connections with Rewi Alley and we learnt that Alley had spent 10 years in Lanzhou which also values him highly.

We passed building sites where a million apartments were being constructed, by the government, for private sale. One million apartments! These were snapped up by many families as investments for their kids, so they often stood empty for years. Such a different culture to ours and gave us much to discuss. Not necessarily better, nor worse,

An evening flight took us to Shanghai for the last leg of our tour. We walked “The Bund”, a floodwall for a trading river, and marvelled at the active lights on skyscrapers all around us creating video scenes and advertising. Despite being such a busy place, and having Chinese tourists wanting to have their photo taken with us, we felt safe.

Our last day was a Shanghai experience of an ancient ‘water city’ where houses were built around canals. School students flocked to practise pencil drawing and watercolour painting of famous bridge scenes. It was 30C and humid so my daily exercises were a sweaty mess! We visited a former residence of Rewi Alley, lovingly preserved, and an affluent international school. By now, travellers’ stomach bugs were kicking in for many of us and we were ready for home. Bidding emotional farewells to our wonderful guides, especially James who had stayed the whole way with us, we boarded the bus to the airport and headed home.

The whole journey was an amazing experience and we’re deeply grateful to the Chinese government and consulate staff in Christchurch, BCLU and Tian Xin especially. The vision and support of Allison Rosanowski was really appreciated and our own Amanda Wright was the star of our show with practical support throughout - I know we are all very grateful to her. Our guides - James, Cynthia, Suzie and Linda especially - offered greater insight and understanding as well as great professionalism.

Immersing yourself in a different culture, especially one as different to ours as that of China, is an experience we should all have in our lives. It challenges our thinking in ways we wouldn’t have expected. The Chinese people’s joy and manaakitanga on meeting us, their patience with and interest in us, has reset my approach to foreign tourists here. There is lots of scaremongering about China in the West, largely driven by America, and whilst I can’t say that this visit gave a comprehensive insight I certainly felt that the friendship was genuine and it is important that NZ keeps our relationship with China independent of our other allies.

Finally, my thanks to our Board and staff for allowing me this opportunity. I look forward to ongoing exchanges.

Ngā manaakitanga (with respect/care)

Andy England