Lanzhou

Lanzhou or Lanchow (both: län`jō`), city (1994 est. pop. 1,295,600), capital of Gansu prov., W China, on the Huang He (Yellow River) at its confluence with the Wei. It is a rail, highway, and air hub and the junction point to remote Xinjiang in extreme NW China. Lanzhou is linked by rail to Beijing and to the Republic of Mongolia and Russia. It is on the highway to Tibet. A rapidly growing industrial city, it receives its power from a nearby hydroelectric facility and from the coal that is mined in the area. It has one of the largest oil refineries in the country, in addition to textile mills, petrochemical, rubber, and fertilizer plants, and machine manufactures. It has a gas-diffusion plant for processing plutonium, and is the center of China's atomic energy industry. An old walled city, Lanzhou was the scene (1936) of a successful Chinese Communist revolt. It is the seat of an oil research institute, Lanzhou Univ., and numerous technical colleges. The name sometimes appears as Lan-chou.

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Lanzhou

 or Lan-chou

City (pop., 2003 est.: 1,576,400), capital of Gansu province, north-central China. Situated on the upper Huang He (Yellow River), it became part of the territory of Qin in the 6th century BC and later developed as a major trade centre on the Silk Road. It became the seat of Lanzhou prefecture under the Sui dynasty (581–618 AD) and the capital of Gansu province in 1666. It was badly damaged during the Muslim uprisings in 1864–75. A centre of Soviet influence in northwestern China in the early 20th century, it was the terminus of the 2,000-mi (3,200-km) Chinese-Soviet highway that was used during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) for the transport of Soviet supplies. Lanzhou developed as an industrial and cultural centre after World War II. It is the seat of Lanzhou University.