Lanjiangji Fort

Lanjiangji Fort

Lanjiangji Fort is a cultural relic protection unit of Anqing City.

Lanjiangji Fort is located on the western bank of the Yangtze River in Yingpan Village, Changfeng Township, in the eastern suburbs of Anqing City. It faces Yanglinzhou and the Lanjiangji reef cluster. This stretch of the river is narrow, with fast currents and many whirlpools, making it a famously treacherous section of the Yangtze since ancient times. Chen Duxiu once analyzed in his *A Brief Discussion on the Strategic Situation of the Yangtze River* that at Lanjiangji, “the exposed rocks are arranged in such a way that enemy ships can never approach the southern (eastern) bank.” Although the over 700-meter-long reef cluster has been repeatedly blasted and cleared after liberation, ships passing through today still hug the western bank and proceed with caution. If you stand at the ruins of the fort and look out, the passing vessels seem almost within arm’s reach. One can imagine the tremendous strategic power the Lanjiangji Fort held in controlling and blocking river traffic in its heyday.

Lanjiangji Fort was built in the eighth year of the Guangxu reign during the Qing Dynasty, which is 1882 AD. The fort is oriented northwest to southeast, approximately 100 meters long, 30 meters wide, and 4 meters high, with slopes reinforced by strip stones and other materials along its perimeter. The gun emplacements were divided into open and concealed types, with a total of fifteen cannons stationed, including two large ones weighing over a thousand kilograms, arranged in a straight line facing the river. The site was garrisoned by the Anhui Provisional Infantry Battalion’s Central Company. At its peak, it reportedly housed five hundred soldiers, and even in the early years of the Republic of China, three hundred troops were still stationed there. Unfortunately, no photos of Lanjiangji Fort have ever been found, so its appearance can now only be inferred from the Qipanshan Fort photographed by Australian George Ernest Morrison: a tall platform base, snow-white walls, a towering gatehouse, and dark gunports, resembling an aircraft carrier moored on the banks of the Yangtze.

Lanjiangji Fort is a historical witness to the Japanese invaders’ trampling of Anqing. After the fall of Nanjing in December 1937, the Japanese army planned to capture Anqing and then use it as a base to attack Wuhan. In early 1938, the Japanese began bombing airports and military fortifications around Anqing, and Lanjiangji Fort was destroyed. On May 29, the Japanese High Command officially issued the order to advance on Anqing, and troops were subsequently deployed by both land and water routes toward the city. At midnight on June 11, Japanese troops of the Kawabe Detachment landed on the riverbanks near Lanjiangji and Dawangmiao under torrential rain, and by the evening of the following day, they had occupied Anqing Airport and stormed into the city.

The ruins of Lanjiangji Fort are now overgrown amid a grove of poplar trees along the riverbank, covered in moss and wild weeds, with scattered broken bricks and stones. The cannons of those days have long been sent by villagers to be melted down in iron furnaces. The surviving twenty-square-meter gun platform base is shattered, and from its fractured cross-sections, it can be seen that the main materials used to construct the base were a mixture of pebbles, soil, and lime—known as sanhetu (a traditional rammed earth mixture). The upper layer, about one meter thick, consists of glutinous rice paste and lime, compact and solid. Among the ruins, there is a row of circular holes about 10 centimeters in diameter, likely left behind by wooden piles used for reinforcement that have since rotted away.