In the afternoon of September 20th, the opening ceremony of the Rewi Alley Photo Exhibition was held at Chang'an Campus. Lai Shaocong, the Vice President of NWU, Cao Hui, the Deputy Director of Shaanxi Provincial People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, Dong Xianmin, Vice Chairman of Shaanxi Soong Ching Ling Foundation, and Hu Zongfeng, Director of Edgar and Helen Snow Studies Center, delivered speeches at the opening ceremony. Mr. An Wei, the founder of the Edgar and Helen Snow Studies Center and the famous Snow research expert, the relevant officials from Department of America and Oceania Continent and Department of Information from Shaanxi Provincial People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, Shaanxi Soong Ching Ling Foundation, the Office of International Programs and the School of Foreign Languages of our university participated in the opening ceremony.
In his speech, Lai Shaocong recalled the history of Rewi Alley and his wife’s co-founding of the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives to solve China’s industrial and technical problems and the refugee problems during the war, the establishment of the International School in Shandan, Gansu Province, which became a model of vocational education in China, and the donation of cultural relics in their later years.
After the opening ceremony, all the participants visited the exhibition with the guidance of the “RED Memory” narrator from the School of Foreign Languages. With the theme of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and New Zealand and the 125th anniversary of the birth of Rewi Alley, the exhibition recreates, in chronological order, the glorious life of Rewi Alley, the “old soldier, old friend and comrade of the Chinese people”, who initiated the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives Movement, founded the Bailie School and devoted himself to Sino-New Zealand friendship and world peace, with a large number of precious historical pictures. The exhibition is the third exhibition of international friends after the Helen Foster Snow exhibition and the Agnes Smedley exhibition, and is another valuable resource for our university to promote friendly civil exchanges between China and Zealand and to tell the story of Sino-New Zealand friendship.
