Swabia

German officials sent the pair to the town of Althengstett, next door to Ostelsheim, in the rural Swabia region, where many people work in agriculture or the region’s famous auto industry.

The team recruited people from a large database that comprised all newly diagnosed ALS cases in Swabia, a southwestern region of Germany.

Taicang, little more than a collection of villages then, was a short drive north from Shanghai’s only commercial airport at the time and had a small-town atmosphere that reminded him of the company’s hometown, Schramberg in Swabia.

The Chinese city is so tightly knit with Germany’s industrial machine that some people call it “Little Swabia,” after the German region that the owners of many of its factories call home.

Götz Kubitschek, a leading far-right intellectual from Swabia who wants to preserve the “ethno-cultural identity” of Germany, bought a rural manor house in the East, which serves as the headquarters for his far-right publishing house and research institute.