This is an opportunity to show how dumb AI is…. I happen to know (via old school tech, like a book) that the publisher Jonathan Cape undertook a round-the-world trip in 1934.
A major stop of the tour was China but ask AI for information on that trip and AI denies it ever happened!! This is because AI thinks you’re referring to Peter Fleming’s One’s Company: A Journey to China, a massive bestseller in 1934 and recounting Fleming’s trip from Peking to Kashgar in 1933. It was published by Jonathan Cape, a good friend of Cape’s. But, Cape did go to China and, indeed, hoped to see Fleming there. (more below)…
However, when Cape’s liner arrived at Shanghai he missed Fleming but did go to see another author of his who lived in Shanghai, Florence Ayscough (according to Michael Howard’s 1971 bio of Cape). Ayscough (pronounced “Askew”) had been born in Shanghai but been educated in Massachusetts where she met the American poet Amy Lowell. She was was a lecturer on Chinese art and literature and was the author of eight books on Chinese history, culture, literary criticism and translation. Cape had published her books A Chinese Mirror (1921), The Autobiography of a Chinese Dog (1927) and Tu Fu (1929 – on the poet). Cape felt warmly towards Ayscough as all her books had sold well for Cape, indeed A Chinese Mirror had been one of Cape’s first books.
I blogged the first volume of Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro’s “O que foi, não volta a ser…” (“What Once Was, Will Never Be Again…”) when it came out in 2022. Now there is a second volume, again juxtaposing photographs of Macao’s past and present. There is also an accompanying exhibition at the Rui Cunha Foundation (FRC) gallery until January 10 2026 (admission free)…
Happy to have been asked to blurb Joseph Yen’s memoir, Book of Lost Dreams(Earnshaw Books) of Mao’s China translated by Stephen Hallett and Wang LiliLili…..
“A fascinating memoir of troubling times in China, Joseph Yen offers a very personal description of the dramatic changes from tradition to modernity, the passage of endless political movements and his own discovery of his sexuality with charming honesty.” – Frances Wood, Former Curator Chinese Collections, British Library; author of ‘Did Marco Polo Go To China’, ‘Great Books of China’ and other works
“A very personal memoir of a country in civil war, revolution and times of jarring change when a family collides with the new political realities of China’s tumultuous, and often disastrous, rollercoaster twentieth century.” – Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking
Joseph Yen was born in Shanghai in 1942 and moved with his mother to Beijing in 1946, as China was still gripped by civil war. He witnessed first-hand the Communist victory and the steady tightening of the CCP’s control over the years that followed. He went on to study English language and literature at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute and, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, was assigned to work at Radio Peking. As political campaigns deepened, many of his friends and colleagues became entangled in factional struggles. Joseph himself was sent down to the countryside to ‘learn from the peasants’, an experience that convinced him he had no future in his homeland. In 1975 he was permitted to visit his father in Hong Kong, after which he left China and settled in England. He pursued a distinguished career as a broadcaster and journalist with the BBC Chinese Service, producing programmes and commentary for Chinese audiences worldwide. He is now retired and lives in London.
Albert Nachbaur ran all his businesses, including his book publishing business from #16 Kan Yu Hutong. Now Ganyu Hutong it runs west to east from Wangfujing to Dengshikou subway station.
This fact is of interest to me as Kan Yu Hutong was something of a centre for European aesthetes in Peking. It is where the English aesthete, writer and artist Osbert Sitwell rented a courtyard hutong home (after a period staying with his old friend Harold Acton). Translated as Alley of the Sweet Rain, this is where Sitwell worked mornings on his planned book about Brighton (Sitwell and Margaret Barton, Brighton, London: Faber & Faber, 1935, and which fascinatingly includes an 1877 account of Brighton by a visiting Chinese diplomat, and translated by none other than Arthur Waley) and then spent his afternoons exploring the hutongs and temples of the city during his sojourn.
Kan Yu Hutong was something of a locale for French aesthetes. Nachbaur’s friend, the French Sinologist, writer, diplomat and translator André d’Hormon (1881-1965) who taught at Beijing University between 1906 and 1955 lived on the hutong while the well-known long time French resident of Peking Dr. Jean Jerome August Bussière (the French Legation doctor who also treated Yuan Shikai and Gladys Werner, wife of ETC Werner and mother of Pamela Werner – see my book Midnight in Peking). Bussière knew everyone medically and artistically in the Foreign Colony and also had a much-admired retreat in the Western Hills. Bussière, Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), and Li Shizeng [5] (1881-1973) founded the Franco-Chinese Center for Sinological Studies in Beijing, of which d’Hormon was the director.
A word on the publisher of Henri Lecourt’s La Cuisine Chinoise – Albert Nachbaur (1879-1933). Born into a family of French architects from Nogent-sur-Marne Nachbaur was himself initially an architect dedicated to Art Nouveau/Art Deco. Before coming to China he had been a performer under the stage name “Max-Nar” in Montmartre singing satirical songs. During the Great War he visited China to recruit labourers for the French contingent of the Chinese Labour Corps. After World War One he returned to China and lived the rest of his life (till a young 54) in Peking with his wife Aline and their son André.
Nachbaur
Nachbaur had a range of jobs – he was the manager and editor of the Journal de Pékin (after 1918) as well as the proprietor of the Na-Che-Pao (a derivative of his own name in Chinese) printers, general manager of Le Chine (a fortnightly review launched in 1921) and the owner of Agencie Radioklegraphique (X-Ray). All these businesses appear to have been run from and registered at 16 Kan Yu Hutong (see part 3 following this).
At some point Nachbaur must have got into publishing. Interestingly as well as some works of his own he published Lecourt and others – mostly French. This is interesting as French people of some standing and longevity on China would normally have been the preserve of French publisher and bookseller Henri Vetch of the French Bookstore in the Grand Hotel de Pekin on Chang’an Avenue. However. Lecourt liked to do highly colourful and Illustrated limited editions. Other Nachbaur editions include the French Sinologist Georges Bouillard, Pekin et ses environs, 1921 – a series of books – I am indebted to Histoire de Chine for this profile of him here. As well as food he was also interested in Chinese traditions, including woodblock prints for decoration, Chinese theatre, architecture (he published La Charpente Chinoise), and games (like Le Jeu de Matchang). More details on Nachbaur’s publications here, again from Histoire de Chine.
And a few pages from Nachbaur’s books showing his art nouveau and art deco influences….
A beautiful 1925 edition of La Cuisine Chinoise by Henri Lecourt, a French member of Tianjin’s interwar “foreign colony” and Directeur du Bureau de Poste de la Concession Française for the French Concession there.
It’s quite rare – only 500 or so copies were ever published – and commands high prices when it does come up for sale. It has been argued that it is the first French book on Chinese food? It was published in Peking (or Pékin, as the French say) by Albert Nachbaur (as “Éditeur”) ( see part 2 of this 3-part series on the book). 40 copies of La Cuisine Chinoise were issued on papier Honan, a further 10 copies were issued on papier Coréen, and 500 copies released as the trade issue on papier pelure Chinois. So it’s rare and expensive!
The London rare book dealers Peter Harrington have posted the following on the book:
‘This in-depth study of Chinese cuisine was written by a master French chef, Henri Lecourt, who was was head of the French post at Tianjin and a member of the Order of the Cloud of Jade Green. He was married to a Chinese chef with whom he conducted the research for this pioneering work, and was a learned connoisseur of both French and Chinese cooking. The work includes a chapter on smoking vegetables, which spices to use and what to replace them with if unavailable, and many recipes using tofu. It also includes detailed accounts on the origins of the recipes, and on table manners and dining etiquette. The publisher notes that “In the enormous bibliography devoted to cooking, one would seek in vain, written in European language a document on Chinese gastronomy. We must therefore praise Mr. Lecourt, one of our compatriots residing in China for many years, knowing Chinese and Chinese inside out, for having filled this gap”.’
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Tomorrow some more on Albert Nachbaur, a most interesting old Peking resident…..
Peiping National Normal University teacher and translator Kinchen Johnson’s Peiping Rhymes’ Commercial Printing & Company, 1932. Johnson, an American, was also the author of Folksongs & Children-Songs – Songs from Peiping.
Christmas Eve 1959 The time comes round when all the faiths and fears With which I marched or trembled Should in the audit of so many years Be in one truth assembled; And by our fire this Christmas Eve, afar From old homes’ glad bell-ringings That made us see the wise men, the one star And hear – what heavenly singings, All seems to tune; remembrance smiles, the sweet Carol again, a blessing Past all uncertainties; may such song greet Ages in their progressing: And long all humblest church-towers, thus upraised Over huge cities stories, Chime forth the bright untrembling ‘God be praised’ To the star-host’s glories.
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Edmund Blunden, 1967
Edmund Charles BlundenCBEMC (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974) was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo. In 1953 after three years back in England, he accepted the post of Professor of English Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He ended his career as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times.
