wool itself is certainly on the spot, and it will be interesting to see whether 
the enterprise succeeds, or fails, as all other large financial speculations 
undertaken and controlled by the Chinese have hitherto done. Lan-chou Fu, 
though throbbing with life and energy, owes its importance, not to any of the 
industries already mentioned, but to its geographical position and official rank. 
It forms the regular stopping-place and exchange for a vast amount of traffic, 
and countless commerce-laden caravans, situated as it is at the point where 
the main road from Sinkiang, Western Mongolia, Northern Tibet, and Siberia 
enters China proper. The administrative area of Lan-chou is greater than 
that of any other Chinese city except Peking. Its Viceroy controls an area of 
over 750,000 square miles, embracing the whole of Sinkiang, as well as Kansu 
and Shensi, or Shén-kan (as the two provinces in combination are called), and 
containing a population of about twenty millions. 
The population of Lan-chou Fu is largely made up of Mohammedans, 
who are viewed with suspicion by the officials. In theory they are not allowed 
to reside within the walls of the city, but only on the north bank of the river. 
This regulation, like so many other laws and regulations in China, is 
practically a dead letter. Since the quelling of the Mohammedan rebellion in 
- 1878, Sinkiang, or ‘‘The New Dominion” as Chinese Turkestan is called, has 
been rapidly peopled with settlers from other provinces, and is in consequence 
steadily increasing in importance, and in trade with China generally, and with 
Siberia. 
No place in ,China offers better opportunity than does Lan-chou of 
studying and comparing the various types that go to form the great Celestial 
Empire. The heavily-built Mongol rubs shoulders with the wild and savage- 
looking Sifan (Tibetan), or the Turco-Mongol from Kashgar; here a 
Chinaman from one of the southern provinces, easily distinguishable by his 
short stature, slight figure, and sallow skin; there a man from Sstich’uan, 
with characteristic turban surmounting the equally characteristic moon-face. - 
A Kansu Mohammedan with long curly beard, and clear-cut features, may be 
seen haggling with a broad-nosed, dull-faced native of the province; or a hot- 
headed, rowdy carter from Honan, quarrelling over two grains of sorghum 
found in a manger, with a placid, but canny Shansi muleteer. 
