Kansu

See also: kansū

English

MAP OF
KANSU PROVINCE
NORTH WEST CHINA (1923)

Etymology

Borrowed from Mandarin 甘肅／甘肃 (Gānsù).

Pronunciation

• enPR: kǎnʹso͞oʹ, gänʹso͞oʹ

Proper noun

Kansu

1. Obsolete spelling of Gansu
   • 1914, Alexander Hosie, On the Trail of the Opium Poppy‎^[1], volume I, Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, →OCLC, page 88:

     Soon after leaving the village we crossed some rising ground, meeting on the summit a caravan of forty mules laden with drugs from Lan-chou, the capital of the province of Kansu. These drugs are sent down by cart to the department city of Ch'in Chou, eight stages from the capital, and there transferred to and thence brought down by pack animals.

   • 1937, Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China‎^[2], Victor Gollancz Ltd, page 91:

     "Famine conditions continue to be reported in Honan, Anhui, Shensi, Kansu, Szechuan, and Kweichow. Quite evidently the country faces one of the most severe famines of many years, and thousands have already died. A recent survey by the Szechuan Famine Relief Commission discovered that 30,000,000 people are now in the famine belt of that province, where bark and 'Goddess-of-Mercy' earth are being consumed by tens of thousands. There are said to be over 400,000 famine refugees in Shensi, over a million in Kansu, some 7,000,000 in Honan, and 3,000,000 in Kweichou. The famine in Kweichow is admitted by the official Central News to be the most serious in 100 years, affecting sixty districts of the province."

   • 1964, William Samolin, East Turkistan to the Twelfth Century‎^[3], The Hague: Mouton & Co, →OCLC, →OL, page 9:

     The general boundaries of East Turkistan are the Altai range on the northeast, Mongolia on the east, the Kansu corridor or the Su-lo-ho basin on the southeast, the K'un-lun system on the south, the Sarygol and Muztay-ata on the west, the main range of the T'ien-shan system on the north to the approximate longitude of Aqsu (80 deg. E), then generally northeast to the Altai system which the boundary joins in the vicinity of the Khrebët Nalinsk and Khrebët Sailjuginsk.

   • 1983 October 16, “Another Defector”, in Free China Weekly‎^[4], volume XXIV, number 41, Taipei, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3:

     Refering^[sic] to his personal experiences on the mainland, Chang said he had been sent to a remote area of Kansu Province in northeastern China to undergo labor reform (punishment) for 10 years.

   • 1993, Chinese Pen‎^[5], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 99:

     A magnificent find was first reported from Chin-ch'uan County, Kansu Province in 1963.¹

Derived terms

• Kansu Corridor

Translations

Gansu — see Gansu

Further reading

• “Kansu, pn.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “Kansu”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “Kansu” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.

Anagrams

• Knaus, Kuans, Kunas, ankus, kunas, unask