Why it looks like this

Shaoxing was laid out as the capital of the Yue kingdom around 490 BC, making it one of China's oldest city sites. Its historic core still works the old delta way: black-awning boats on canals that parallel the lanes, whitewashed houses over the water, and stone slab bridges by the hundred — the city once counted thousands.

It is also a city of famous exports: Shaoxing yellow rice wine, aged in the jars its canals once carried, and China's greatest modern writer, Lu Xun, whose childhood lanes are preserved as the city's best-known street.