Lishui, formerly known as Chuzhou, is a prefecture level city with the largest land area under the jurisdiction of Zhejiang Province; It is located in the Yangtze River Delta, in the southwest of Zhejiang Province, with coordinates between 118 ° 41 ′ - 120 ° 26 ′ E and 27 ° 25 ′ - 28 ° 57 ′ N. The terrain is dominated by middle mountains and hills, leaning from southwest to northeast; It has one municipal district: Liandu District, seven counties: Qingtian County, Jinyun County, Suichang County, Songyang County, Yunhe County, Qingyuan County, Jingning County, and one county city: Longquan City; The city covers an area of 17300 square kilometers. By the end of 2021, the city's registered residence population will be 2.6997 million.

Lishui is known as the "Zhejiang Green Valley". There are 3573 peaks with an altitude of more than 1000 meters in Lishui, 1929 meters above the sea level at Huangmaojian of Fengyang Mountain in Longquan City, and 1856.7 meters above the sea level at Baishanzu of Qingyuan County, which are the first and second peaks in Zhejiang Province respectively. Lishui is one of the first batch of pilots of the National Civilized City, National Ecological Demonstration Zone, National Ecological Protection and Construction Demonstration Zone, China's Excellent Tourism City, China's Excellent Ecotourism City, Zhejiang Forest City, and Zhejiang High quality Development and Construction Demonstration Zone for Common Prosperity. In 2017, China's prefecture level cities ranked 47th in the overall well-off index.

In November 2018, it was rated 46 in 2018 China's prefecture level cities' comprehensive well-off index. On December 12, 2018, it was named as the second batch of "Green Water and Green Mountains are Jinshan and Yinshan" practice and innovation bases. In October 2021, it was rated as the third batch of social credit system construction demonstration area.

In 2021, Lishui will achieve a regional GDP of 171.03 billion yuan.