Why it looks like this

At Jiangyin the huge lower Yangtze squeezes to its narrowest stretch, which made the town a military key for dynasties: forts on Huangshan hill watched the river, and armies fought to hold this crossing.

The same geography chose it for the Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge, opened in 1999 with a main span of 1,385 metres — then among the longest suspension spans on Earth. Around the old fortress town, riverside shipyards and factories made Jiangyin one of China's richest county-level cities.