Jiangsu Province in the context of "Lingshan Buddhist Palace"

Southern Tang (Chinese: 南唐; pinyin: Nán Táng) was a dynastic state of China that existed during Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Located in southern China, the Southern Tang proclaimed itself to be the successor of the Tang dynasty. The capital was located at Nanjing in present-day Jiangsu Province. At its territorial peak in 951, the Southern Tang controlled the whole of modern Jiangxi, and portions of Anhui, Fujian, Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangsu provinces.

The Southern Tang was founded by Li Bian in 937, when he overthrew emperor Yang Pu of Wu. He largely maintained peaceable relations with neighboring states. His son Li Jing did not follow this foreign policy, conquering the Min and Ma Chu dynasties in 945 and 951 respectively.

Gaoyou Lake (Chinese: 高邮湖; pinyin: Gāoyòu Hú) is the sixth largest freshwater lake in China. It is located between Anhui Province and Jiangsu Province. In a sense, Gaoyou Lake is a manmade lake, and its creation is part of a long story about flood control and hydraulic engineering in ancient China. Gaoyou Lake is now part of the Huai River system as the Huai River flows south through Gaoyou Lake on its way to the Yangtze River and the Pacific. It is about 39 kilometres (24 mi) long and 30 kilometres (19 mi) wide, covering approximately 674.7 square kilometres (300 sq mi).

Huai'an, formerly Huaiyin, is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province in Eastern China. As of 2020, the built-up area (metro) of its 3 central urban districts had 2,544,767 inhabitants and the prefecture-level city as a whole had 4,556,230 inhabitants, down from 4.8 million in 2010.

Long an important regional center, Huai'an lies on and is named for the Huai River, the historical boundary between Northern and Southern Chinese culture. Once much closer to the East China Sea, it now lies in the middle of Jianghuai, the vast alluvial plain created by silt from the Huai and from the Yellow River, which flowed nearby for centuries prior to the massive floods in the mid-19th century which returned it to its old course north of Shandong. Huai'an is known as the birthplace of Han Xin, a famed general who helped found the Han dynasty and overwhelm Xiang Yu in Chu-han contention; Wu Cheng'en (1500–1582), the Ming author of Journey to the West; and Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), a prominent and early Chinese Communist leader who served as premier of the PRC from 1949 until his death in 1976.

Qian, also variously spelt Ch'ien, Chien, Chin, Tsien, and (from its Wu pronunciation) Zee, is a common Chinese surname. It is particularly common in Eastern China, where members of the family ruled from Hangzhou as kings of Wuyue in the 10th-century interregnum between the Tang and Song dynasties. In 2008, Qian was the 96th most common surname in mainland China, shared by 2.2 million people, with the greatest concentration of Qians being in Jiangsu Province.