Why it looks like this

Puyang, in the flat northeast corner of Henan near the Yellow River, was established as a city in 1983 to serve the newly developed Zhongyuan oil field. Its core is what a planned oil city looks like: broad straight avenues, generous blocks, and work-unit compounds laid out all at once.

The area's history is far older — nearby digs produced a famous 6,000-year-old dragon figure made of shells — but the street network itself is almost entirely a product of the oil decades.