The yellow mud houses of the old town lie partly on a bluff above the Hwang Ho; around the town, along the valley floor, are irrigated plots of vegetables and peppers and the orchards and melon patches which gave Lanchow its reputation—"the city of fruits and melons."

Within the last nine years this medieval city has been plunged abruptly into the mechanised world of the twentieth century. Tall multi-storied blocks of factories and offices and flats rise above the roofs of the old town; factory chimneys stand up starkly against a background of sunscorched pink and ochre hills; in the heart of the city mule carts and Czech Skoda buses packed with workers raise swirling clouds of yellow dust from the still unsurfaced streets.

Everywhere, crowds of labourers put in essential services, swarm over the new construction sites, work to the sound of Central Asian folk music from loud-speakers slung from the telegraph poles, great variety of peoples; apple-cheeked folk of Kansu and tall mahogany-skinned caravan drivers from Sinkiang, Huis and Tibetans, Chinese from Peking and a sprinkling of unobtrusive Russian technicians.

Beyond, to the west, the Lan-Sin railroad is being pushed forward, to provide a new link between China and the U.S.S.R., and at Karamai large scale exploitation of the vast oil resources of China's northwest is gathering momentum.