Gateway Gunned

In Kansu, China's most northwestern province, is situated the sizable city of Lanchow, for centuries China's gateway to Central Asia and beyond. Also through this city the Tartar, Turk, Hun, Mongol, Buddhist and Christian first entered the broad, populous Chinese basin below the Great Wall.

A mile above sea level, Lanchow lies in a cup surrounded by mountains at the point where the Yellow River intercepts the old desert route from Turkestan to Peking. Inside its mud walls and high gates is found a desert melting pot of Mongols, Turks, Tibetans, Manchus. Moslems who have long thrived on the city's far-flung trade. At Lanchow, Bactrian camels dump full caravan loads that have been hauled 1,500 miles from the Turkestan-Siberian railhead in Kazakistan. By camelback are brought dates from Turkestan, raisins and apricots from Turfan and Ti-Hwa.

But in the last two years Lanchow has meant even more to the "Free China" of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. It is the eastern terminus for the much-needed war supplies that come from the Soviet Union. Instead of the wool, fur, brick tea, vegetable oil and camel hair that used to be the lifeblood of Lanchow's trade, now airplane engines, bombs, ammunition, gasoline, military trucks are the chief commodities. The city is also the concentration point for China's slowly building Air Force. So important a military secret has Lanchow become in the scheme of war that in two years only three trusted Occidental newspapermen have been allowed to visit it.

So changed is Lanchow's trade now that shop signs are in Russian, Russian cigarets are offered by peddlers, Russian aviators, mechanics, traders are seen everywhere, although they keep to themselves socially. The "representative" of the Russian Ambassador to China meets there with the Chinese Foreign Office's special delegate to go over details of the munitions trade. Slowly the Japanese have also waked up to the importance of Lanchow. Last week they decided to do something about it. For three days Japanese aviators bombed the city, sending over as many as 101 airplanes in one raid. The Japanese claimed to have destroyed the big Lanchow airdrome, and with it many Chinese planes. Chinese retorted that the Japanese aviators, as usual, had singled out only Lanchow's civilian population for attack.

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