Ｓｐｅｅｃｈ ｂｙ ＣＰＡＦＦＣ Ｖｉｃｅ Ｐｒｅｓｉｄｅｎｔ Ｌｉ Ｘｉａｏｌｉｎ ａｔ Ｃｏｍｍｅｍｏｒａｔｉｖｅ Ｍｅｅｔｉｎｇ ｏｆ Ｒｅｗｉ Ａｌｌｅｙ

(Excerpts)

In Beijing on September 7, we held the commemorative meeting marking Rewi Alleys 110th anniversary of birth, 80th anniversary of arrival in China and 20th anniversary of passing. Today we are holding this grand meeting here to cherish the memory of this renowned writer, poet, educator and social activist, our old friend Rewi Alley.

Gansu Province, especially Shandan County, is where Rewi Alley lived for a long time and was regarded by him as his second hometown. His educational thoughts have been fully practised and promoted in this place, giving strong support to the development of Gung Ho Movement.

Rewi Alley foresaw that the construction of New China would need plenty of trained personnel, so together with the former English journalist George Hogg, he established Bailie Technical School. The school was named “Bailie”, meaning training for the dawn, which reflected Rewi Alleys great expectations for the school and all the students. It is from here that he explored an education mode of part work-part study, combining teaching with production to train people who would be able to “use both brain and hands, and create and analyze”. Based on the experiences in Shandan, he wrote a book entitled Shandan: An Adventure in Creative Education. After the Shandan earthquake in 1953, the School moved to Lanzhou and changed its name into Lanzhou Petroleum Technical School. For many years, this school has cultivated many outstanding technicians in oil and other industries who undertake important technical or leading positions in various big oilfields and other industrial battlefronts in our country.

Due to Rewi Alleys efforts and influence, the Bailie School in Shandan and Gung Ho that he had initiated have always received special care from the government and people of New Zealand. To support these two undertakings has been regarded as an important action in developing friendship between the Chinese and New Zealand peoples. In the 1940s, CORSO had sent six technical experts to teach in Bailie School and helped Alley solve the problem of funds, equipments, etc. After the School was rebuilt in the 1980s, a still closer tie of cooperation with New Zealand was established. Rewi Alleys birthplace Christchurch and his second home Gansu Province were twinned as the first pair of friendship cities between China and New Zealand. Rewi Alley is a builder of the friendship bridge between the Chinese and New Zealand peoples. His contributions to enhancing the understanding, friendship and cooperation between the peoples of China and New Zealand have become a glorious page in the history of China-New Zealand relations.

Education is a cause of vital and lasting importance. Today is the 23rd Teachers Day. To commemorate Rewi Alley here, an educator who worked tirelessly and selflessly over 40 years on the educational front for Chinas socialist construction, we will learn from his internationalist spirit of keeping the entire world in mind and selflessness, his life philosophy of seeking no fame or gain and his work style of persistence and tenacity and doing hard work and solid work. We will inherit and develop the cause of Gung Ho and Shandan Bailie School that he had resumed in his late years, continue to develop the “Gung Ho” spirit of “work hard and work together”, and working with one mind and devotion, promote the expansion and development of cooperative economy in China, make great efforts to advance the new-type vocational education that he had advocated combining classroom teaching and productive labor, and cultivate a new generation ofpractical people possessing ability to do actual work and awareness for innovation, in order to meet the increasingly urgent demand for practical technicians from various trades and professions and contribute to revitalizing China and building a harmonious world.