ABSTRACT
Like many of China’s long-standing foreign friends, Rewi Alley found it difficult to adjust to the shift to a more market-oriented society in the early 1980s. As attitudes towards China in the international community changed, so too did the Chinese authorities’ assessment of the importance of its old friends. The privileges to which the friends were entitled were also reassessed. In 1980, Alley lamented that he now had to pay ‘foreigners’ prices’ for his accommodation at Beidaihe and might not be able to go again1 (though in the last year of his life, the ailing Alley had the use of his own special train carriage on his final trip to Beidaihe).2
