Pizhou

Pizhou is a county-level city in northern Jiangsu province, China, administered by the prefecture-level city of Xuzhou. It sits at the northern edge of the province, where it borders the Shandong prefecture-level cities of Linyi to the northeast and Zaozhuang to the northwest. The 2020 census counted 1,462,563 people in the whole county-level city, of whom about 850,815 lived in its urban area, and the administrative territory covers roughly 2,088 square kilometres. Because Pizhou is a county-level city rather than a prefecture-level one, its government answers to Xuzhou, yet it is large enough in population to rank alongside many prefecture-level cities elsewhere in China. Its Chinese name is written 邳州 and romanised in pinyin as Pizhou.