Officially it is a city.
But Hanchuan, in central China, is largely rural.
Many of its 1m people live between fields and small factories.
A firm producing sewing thread and a handful of fisheries make up a good chunk of its economy.
Even so, when The Economist visited recently, one spot in particular was buzzing:
Hanchuan's first McDonald's, which opened in January.
Towns like Hanchuan never loomed large in the plans of multinational companies.
But suddenly hundreds of places like it are the new frontier for Western fast-food giants.
In the next three years McDonald's is due to add 3,000 outlets
to the 7,000 it had in China in 2025,
many of them in smaller cities and towns.
KFC intends to add over 4,000 to its tally of 12,600 over the same period.
Burger King, Domino's Pizza, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Subway all have similarly ambitious plans.
One factor behind the push into the countryside is the need for new customers.
Roughly two-thirds of China's people live outside its 50 biggest cities,
which are already saturated with burger and chicken joints.
Around 70% of KFCs in China are within a ten-minute cycle ride of another KFC,
according to UBS, a bank; at about 60%,
the "cannibalisation share" for McDonald's is not much better.
This makes finding populations unexposed to their offerings all the more important.