Why it looks like this

Fearing war in the 1960s, China moved strategic industry deep inland — the 'Third Front'. The Second Automobile Works (later Dongfeng Motor) was deliberately built in the folds of the Qinba mountains at Shiyan, its workshops dispersed among separate valleys so no single strike could destroy them.

A city grew to serve the factory, and the map still shows the strategy: fingers of streets running up valley floors, factory districts tucked behind ridges, no central plain to unify them. The truck maker later moved its headquarters to Wuhan, leaving Shiyan the mountain city a defence plan drew.