Why it looks like this

Lianyungang grew where the Longhai Railway — the great east–west line across central China — meets the Yellow Sea. That makes its docks the ocean end of a continuous rail route through Central Asia to Europe, promoted as the New Eurasian Land Bridge.

The map is a city in pieces: the old town inland, the port district at the shore beneath rocky Yuntai Mountain — celebrated in legend as the home of the Monkey King from 'Journey to the West' — and new zones filling the coastal flats between.