Chinese cities are row upon row of tower blocks.
We were invited into a couple of private apartments, in both tower blocks and much early communist period tenaments, and they seemed much the same as you’d get in much of Europe. Now, the way things are done is important here; the buildings that housed the flats, and in particular their state, would have been very familiar to many Brits. Luxembourg is much cleaner, house proud if you like, although the Luxembourgers are not as insanely prim as the Swiss, so the communal area of Luxembourg flats are better than the Chinese, given my sweeping statistical analysis involving two Chinese buildings. The French are neater too, which might surprise more than a few Brits.
As we travelled by Chinese TGV from Zhengzhou to Beijing, we passed many large Chinese towns. Well, more specifically, we passed many fields of tower blocks seen in the distance. If a Flemish village has a bar, a (modern) Chinese village has a tower block. I guess the geology helps there.
The ride between Zhengzhou and Beijing passes many towns of tower blocks, and, entirely separately, there are many villages of single story dwellings. Indeed, we passed one village where a group of locals were gathering some kind of crop by hand in a field right by the railway track.
The density of villages was similar to rides across the Netherlands. The landscape is a plain, although a lot less wet. But, of course, the style of the various communities is quite different. Imagine a Netherlands with tower blocks instead of twee houses, and you’ll be most of the way there.