Dezhou.

Dezhou is a prefecture-level city in north-western Shandong, on the flat alluvial plain where the Yellow River touches its southern boundary and the Grand Canal crosses its middle. It administers two districts, seven counties and two county-level cities, and counted 5,611,194 inhabitants in the 2020 census. Old accounts called it the Junction of Nine Arteries and the Portal of the Capital, which describes a town whose importance came from being a crossroads: two waters, then four railways. It became a prefecture-level city in December 1994, and a new district, Tianqu, was unveiled in 2022. Its countryside gives it cotton, watermelons, jujubes and a black pottery tradition; its best-known product is a braised chicken that began as a canal wharf stall.