Why it looks like this

The ancient city of Shangqiu, rebuilt in the early 1500s after floods, is a planning treasure: a square of brick walls containing a grid of lanes, surrounded by a broad moat whose outer earthwork forms a circle. Seen from above it is a diagram of the old cosmology — heaven round, earth square.

The region claims far older roots as a homeland of the Shang dynasty and the word for 'commerce' itself (shang). The modern city grew around the railway junction to the west, leaving the moated square intact on the map like a stamp from another age.