Why it looks like this

Yunfu is the westernmost and most rural of Guangdong's cities, set among low mountains south of the Xi River — the great waterway to Guangzhou. Its fame is mineral: for centuries the county has quarried, cut and carved stone, and today thousands of workshops make it one of China's biggest stone-processing centres.

The map shows a valley town rather than a delta grid: districts follow the river flats between hills, strung along the highways that carry its stone east to the Pearl River Delta.