Why it looks like this

Nanchong has raised silkworms and woven silk for some two thousand years, a trade that made it the market city of the northeastern Sichuan basin. The Jialing River, winding in broad loops on its way to Chongqing, gives the city its shape: districts sit on the flats inside the bends.

The wider prefecture holds one of China's best-preserved ancient county towns, Langzhong, whose feng-shui layout in a river loop shows what many Sichuan towns once looked like.