Jonathan Cape’s 1934 China Stop-Over, Florence Ayscough and Shanghai

Posted: January 1st, 2026 | No Comments »

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.

FYI: for more on Ayscough see Lindsay Shen’s Knowledge is Pleasure: Florence Ayscough in Shanghai (published by the Royal Asiatic Society China and Hong Kong University Press.)

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