Saturday, 6 February

Second day of the first lunar month

At 11.30, from Shanhuju airport I took the military aircraft “Kunming” to leave Chongqing. The Generalissimo sent Zhang Lisheng (張厲生), the Secretary General of the Executive Yuan, to see me off. Wang Chonghui and Wu Tiecheng came to the airport despite their illness, and I was very touched. The people that came included: Li Wenfan, Chan Chak, Chen Qingyun, Chen Jianru, Wu Guozhen, Hu Shize, Qian Jieping, Xie Baoqiao, Li Zhuoxian, Li Bohua, Shao Lizi, Huang Junbi (黃君璧)[1], Zhaoxian, Kitty and people from the department. There were so many. Ambassador Panyushkin didn’t feel well, so instead he dispatched Counsellors G.F. Rezanov and T.F. Skvortsoff. It snowed heavily this morning, and snow on such a scale that hasn’t been seen in Chongqing for a long time. Someone joked that I had already brought the Soviet Union’s climate to Chongqing. Ancient people said snow was auspicious. It should not be a bad thing. I arrived in Chengdu at 11.45, changed flight there, and arrived at Lanzhou at 4.30. The telegrams that we sent to special envoy Xia and Chairman Gu Zhenglun (谷正倫) had not yet reached them. Luckily I arrived with Bureau Head He Jingwu (何競武) and he invited me to stay in his residence. Everything was quite nice. I came to Lanzhou once in l935 and now I see the whole city has changed. The roads and houses are nice and clean, with Xian style, and much better than Chongqing. No wonder The Generalissimo praised it. It happened that people here celebrated the new treaty and there was a street parade of dragon lamps, which is quite similar to the festival outing in Guangdong. After dinner, Deputy Bureau Head Shen Qi (沈圻, Kuiliang) accompanied me and took me around to see the city streets and the Yellow River iron bridge. The bridge was built in l907 and originally would be maintained once a year, but since the war, we have been unable to do so. It has been terribly cold the past few days and this is rare in Lanzhou. Rivers are frozen, and this is the first time in six years. Some of my colleagues lived in the hostel, and I went to have a look. The facilities looked fine. I went back to He’s for dinner, and tried “pigeon fish”. It is said that the pigeon flew to the Yellow River and transformed into this fish. It is produced 30 miles away from Lanzhou, and they had to break the ice to catch it, so it was not easy to catch. The meat was nice but not hard. Indeed it was delicious. Also, there are some ten types of pear. The pear trees are several hundred years old, and some are so big that they need two or three people to encircle the trunks. There was a so-called soft pear, that when it grew it was similar to a normal pear, but after it becomes ripe, it turns black, and becomes very soft. If they are stored underground, and soaked in water, then if you take them out in winter, after removing the ice, they taste like ice cream. There is one type of small pear called a hanging egg. It is as small as a pigeon’s egg. It tastes like soft pear, but even softer and sweeter. After dinner, Chairman Gu came, we discussed, in detail, the recent diplomatic situation and also the Sino-Soviet relationship. He understood these quite well. Bureau Head He said the Lanzhou weather was quite nice, and in winter it always had sunlight. In the evening during the coldest time the temperature could reach -8 or -9 degrees, but it was quite warm during the day time. He also said that the Han Muslims followed Muslim teachings closely, to an extent even more than the Al-Ahsa and Uighurs. His secretary Huang Zhaotong (黃兆桐) was Cantonese. He gave me 3 rubbings and inscriptions, which were unearthed recently. And also, according to the Bank of Communications President Zheng Dayong (鄭大勇), camel hair is not inexpensive, so I asked him to buy 3 catties to send to Fanny.

[1]A famous female Chinese painter.