Why it looks like this

Kunshan sits on the rail line between Shanghai and Suzhou, and from the 1990s it filled with Taiwanese-invested electronics plants — at its peak assembling a large share of the world's laptops. The map shows the industry: kilometre after kilometre of rectangular factory blocks and worker housing along the corridor.

Yet inside the same city limits survive the opposite streets: Zhouzhuang, one of China's most famous water towns, where lanes and canals interlace under stone bridges — the delta's old network preserved beside its newest one.