Rewi Alley Research Articles

A Study on the Historical Context and Digital Future of Rewi Alley and the International Communication of Gansu Culture

A Study on the Historical Context and Digital Future of Rewi Alley and the International Communication of Gansu Culture

An Embodied Cognitive Study of Female Character Images in Rewi Alley’s Tang Poetry Translation Bai Mei & Chong Tianlin

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A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Translator’s Style: Focusing on Li Bai’s Poems Translated by Rewi Alley and Xu Yuanchong

A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Translator’s Style: Focusing on Li Bai’s Poems Translated by Rewi Alley and Xu Yuanchong

Reconstructing the poet’s image through institutional translation—a case study of Rewi Alley’s translation of Li Bai’s Poems

ABSTRACT Rewi Alley was a New Zealand-born political activist, social reformer, and a renowned “foreign friend of China”, who devoted almost his entire life to China. Deeply interested in the Chinese language and culture, Alley was also a prolific translator of Chinese poetry. Although the great Chinese poet Li Bai’s poems have been translated into English by influential western translators such as Ezra Pound and Author Waley, Alley’s translation of Li Bai’s poems has some unique features in terms of text selection and translation style, which took place in an institutional setting. This study adopts an institutional approach to examine Alley’s translation of Li Bai’s poems and explores its unique features to reveal a distinctive type of institutional translation in the Chinese context. Through historical context analysis, textual analysis, and para-textual analysis of Alley’s translation, it shows that Alley in his translation has imprinted Li Bai’s poems with his own strong personal marks, reconstructing Li Bai’s image from a romantic poet into a realistic one, but failing to convey the spirit of the original poems by adopting his unconventional style of line-breaks. Alley’s translation of Li Bai’s poems was influenced by both personal and institutional ideologies and poetics, and his translation was to serve the goal of the Chinese government institution where he worked.

A STUDY ON THE TANG POETRY TRANSLATION IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF "HARMONY-GUIDED THREE-LEVEL POETRY TRANSLATION CRITERIA" - A CASE STUDY OF LI BAI'S "LOOKING AT THE MOUNT SKY GATE"

<p>The poetry of Tang is a kind of classic literature of China and famous historical heritage. Taking the "Harmony-guided Three-Level poetry translation criteria" as the theoretical basis, this paper compares the translations of two translators of different styles in different periods of Li Bai's "<em>Looking at the Mount Sky Gate"</em> from the macro, middle and micro levels. As for the Chinese translator Xu Yuanchong, his version has high formal beauty and musical beauty. Besides the expression of a few images, he also gave a good consideration to "the beauty of numbers". Rewi Alley's translation is a free verse, but he tries to approach the original poem in terms of meaning. By the analysis of the above two versions, the authors endeavor to give their own version according to the "Harmony-guided Three-Level poetry translation criteria". The translation study of "<em>Looking at the Mount Sky Gate</em>" can enrich the theory of "Harmony-guided Three-Level poetry translation criteria" and promote the spread of Chinese literature and culture.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0626/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Embracing Friendship through Gift and Exchange: Rewi Alley and the Art of Museum Diplomacy in Cold War China and New Zealand

The growth in the 1950s and 1960s of the Rewi Alley Collection of Chinese Art and Archaeology at Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, is largely a personal story of the shared aspirations of two men du...

Being a “Friend of Free China”: W. G. Goddard in Nationalist Taiwan

The relationship between various Chinese governments and Western individuals who supported them throughout the 20th The tone of such research begins to change markedly, however, once one turns to scholarship on figures who continued this tradition of “friendship” with China in the years following 1949. The names of figures of “the Right” such as Claire Chennault and Alfred Kohlberg are as well known to us as those of Rewi Alley or Edgar Snow. Yet the context of the Cold War in which these individuals operated has made the academic research about them far more fraught. The divisive debates which once raged over the “China Lobby” and its influence on Area Studies in the United States still cast shadows over the study of those individuals who found themselves at the heart of such events. century, either in China or abroad, forms the foundation of an already substantial academic literature. The historiography of Republican China, in particular, is populated with often colorful figures such as George Ernest Morrison, Morris Cohen, and William Donald.

Rewi Alley, 1897–1987

Rewi’s parents were idealists. Frederick James Alley, a schoolteacher, was born in New Zealand to Protestant Irish parents; Clara Maria Buckingham had emigrated from England with her parents. They married in 1892, made their first home in Springfield, and in their separate ways worked towards realising their aspirations for a better world. Frederick, a strict disciplinarian, instilled in his children a respect for hard work and education. He was a democrat, a religious non-conformist, a social visionary and a pamphleteer, producing essays on the reform of education, and on land tenure and farming in which he proposed state-owned, mechanised industrial farm units, each with its own community of labourers, mechanics and tradespeople. Alley remembers him as a great believer in social progress, ‘a socialist before his time’ (Rewi Alley: An Autobiography 9). Clara, a governess prior to her marriage, worked for women’s suffrage and in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and represented the Malvern Women’s Institute at the first National Council of Women in 1896.

The Untold Story of “Foreign Devil” Adult Educators in Shanghai Silk Factories (1920 To 1949)

From the 1920s until 1949, foreign adult educators (mostly women) in the Shanghai YWCA worked to foster labor unrest and build a better world. Many started out as liberal Christians but ended up supporting Chairman Mao. They used street theater, mass singing, games, pageants, structured exercises, and “bible classes,” where learners read Communist literature. Their extraordinary efforts are largely unrecognized because many self-identified as homosexual and Communist. This study involved interviews and a close reading of English- and Chinese-language materials. Its purpose was to document revolutionary adult education (mostly for young women) in the Shanghai silk filatures (1920 to 1949) and to create an understanding of the work of foreigners such as Rewi Alley and Maud Russell and visiting luminaries such as John Dewey and R. H. Tawney. In China, there is a tendency to ignore the past. Yet 21st century adult education could be improved by understanding adult education in 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s Shanghai.

Who Friend, Who Enemy? Rewi Alley and the Friends of China

“Who friend, who enemy?” So asks Rewi Alley, poet-laureate of Sino- Foreign Friendship, echoing Mao. This article considers Friendship2 in the Chinese Communist sense; its principal focus is on the work of Alley and his role as an official Friend of China.3 Friendship is a key theme in China'ss foreign policy repertoire, and the Friend of China is a living embodiment of that Friendship. In the days when the People'ss Republic was isolated in the international community, any foreigner who was involved in China in some way had the potential to be labelled a Friend. Friendship implied obedience to the Chinese government'ss version of events. Declared ideological commitment to the ideals of the Chinese Communist Party was preferred, but not essential.

A Learner in China, A Life of Rewi Alley. By Willis Airey. Christchurch: NZ Monthly Review, 1970. 291 pp. Illustration NZ $4.50.

A Learner in China, A Life of Rewi Alley. By Willis Airey. Christchurch: NZ Monthly Review, 1970. 291 pp. Illustration NZ $4.50.

Eighth Route Regions in North China

OST descriptions of the Eighth Route Army (now officially the i8th Group Army, but still popularly known by the old name) date from i938, the halcyon year of Chinese unity, when the Central Government, then in Hankow, placed no serious obstacles to the visits of Chinese and foreigners to General Chu Teh's headquarters, then at Linfen in South Central Shansi. In the past two years, silence has been increasingly clamped down upon the Eighth Route area, by the armed blockade maintained by Chungking troops. At rare intervals, a high dignitary with a considerable armed force of body-guards manages to force this cordon, taking a few persons in or out. But the foreign surgeon appointed to replace Dr. Norman Bethune, when the latter died at his post at Wutfaishan, tried for a year to enter and at last accepted work in other Chinese hospitals of the Central Government. More recently, this past winter, the famous Rewi Alley, organizer-in-chief of the Industrial Cooperatives, was detained by the military when he tried to travel to Yenan to visit cooperatives in that region and beyond. Despite these difficulties, information still at times seeps through to Chungking. During my visit there last December, two of my Chinese friends returned from Eighth Route territory after a stay of two years. Their chance to get back was offered by the Battle of the Hundred Regiments last August, which will be described later. A high political officer of the Eighth Route travelled with a bodyguard of 3,500 men to make courtesy calls on the friendly armies (i.e. the blockading Chungking troops) and ask their cooperation in their coming offensive against Japanese communications. Choosing the period when the Burma Road was closed and when consequently Chungking did not wish to offend the Soviet Union by too open warfare against the Chinese Communists, they were able to pass from general to general till-after a month of such courtesy callsthey reached the Lunghai Railway. (Incidentally they fought their