Zhou (country subdivision) in the context of Youzhou (ancient China)

The term Nine Provinces or Nine Regions (Chinese: 九州; pinyin: Jiǔ Zhōu), is used in ancient Chinese histories to refer to territorial divisions or islands during the Xia and Shang dynasties and has now come to symbolically represent China. "Province" is the word used to translate zhou (州) – since before the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), it was the largest Chinese territorial division. Although the current definition of the Nine Provinces can be dated to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, it was not until the Eastern Han dynasty that the Nine Provinces were treated as actual administrative regions.

The Protectorate General to Pacify the West (Anxi Grand Protectorate), initially the Protectorate to Pacify the West (Anxi Protectorate), was a protectorate (640 – c. 790) established by the Chinese Tang dynasty in 640 to control the Tarim Basin. The head office was first established at the prefecture of Xi, now known as Turpan, but was later shifted to Qiuci (Kucha) and situated there for most of the period.

The Four Garrisons of Anxi in Kucha, Khotan, Kashgar, and Karashahr were installed between 648 and 658 as garrisons under the western protectorate. In 659, Sogdia, Ferghana, Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Herat, Kashmir, the Pamirs, Tokharistan, and Kabul all submitted to the protectorate under Emperor Gaozong of Tang.

You Prefecture or You Province, also known by its Chinese name Youzhou, was a prefecture (zhou) in northern China during its imperial era.

"You Province" was cited in some ancient sources as one of the nine or twelve original provinces of China around the 22nd century BC, but You Prefecture was used in actual administration from 106 BC to the tenth century. As is standard in Chinese, the same name "Youzhou" was also often used to describe the prefectural seat or provincial capital from which the area was administered.

Li Jing (Chinese: 李璟, later changed to 李景; 916 – August 12, 961), originally Xu Jingtong (徐景通), briefly Xu Jing (徐璟) in 937–939, courtesy name Boyu (伯玉), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Yuanzong of Southern Tang (南唐元宗), also known in historiography as the Middle Lord of Southern Tang (南唐中主), was the second and penultimate monarch of China's Southern Tang dynasty during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. He reigned his state from 943 until his death.

During Li Jing's earlier reign, he expanded Southern Tang's borders by extinguishing smaller neighboring states: Min in 945 and Ma Chu in 951. However, the warfare also exhausted the wealth of the country, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the Later Zhou invasion in 956. Forced to cede all prefectures north of the Yangtze River, he also had to relinquish his title as an emperor and accept the Later Zhou's overlordship in 958, and later the Northern Song's overlordship after 960.

Yunzhou or Yun Prefecture (Chinese: 雲州) was a zhou (prefecture) in imperial China seated in modern Datong, Shanxi, China. It existed (intermittently) from 640 to 1044.

It was one of the Sixteen Prefectures.