Liupanshui City is located in the west of Guizhou Province in China, it is connected westerly with Yunnan Province, easterly with Anshun City, northerly with Bijie Prefecture, southerly with Qianxinan Prefecture.

Liupanshui City is a hub railway communication, both the GuiKun(Guiyang-kunming) railroad and Neikun (Neijiang-Kunming) railroad go across Liupanshui City, the railroad southern marshalling station of Liupanshui City is one of the biggest marshalling stations in southwestern China. The scheduled flight from Hongkong could arrive at Guiyang directly. It is 270km from Liupanshui to Guiyang, and it is 150km of expressway from Guiyang to Huangguoshu, and 120km of high-grade road from Huangguoshu to Liupanshui, and it normally takes 3 hours from Guiyang to Liupanshui City. The expressway from Huangguoshu to Shengjingguan which is the boundary of Guizhou and Yunnan is under the construction, so it would be very convenient to go Liupanshui from Guiyang or Kunming after the expressway being finished construction in 2007. Liupanshui would plan constructing feeder airport, now the construction plan is being drawn up.

Liupanshui City lies at the sloping area from Yunnan plateau to Guizhou, influenced by the crustal movement of Tebet plateau, the grand mountains and wonderful canyons are formed, so the karst geological landforms of Liupanshui are great with high viewing and admiration. In Liupanshui, the Chives Lawn of an elevation of 2,900 meters is also the highest mountain in Guizhou, the lowest place lies at Beipan river valley named Maokou of an elevation of 586 meters.

The history of Liupanshui is long, there are many ancient humain remains in Liupanshui. The Ancient Human Remains of Panxian Big Cave being found in 1990s, which can be traced far back to 300,000 years ago, has being excavated more than 50 animal fossils. The ancient human fossils of Shuicheng Saltpeter Cave Man are far back to over 100,000 years ago, the human fossils of Peach Blossom Cave Man are far back to over 12,000 years ago in the Old Stone Age. In the ChunQiuAge (in 600 B.C.), it was an ancient country named Zangke, and Yelang hinterland from War Time to West Han Dynasty (in 100 B.C.), so there are massive Yelang cultural remains and beautiful folk legends in Liupanshui City. The Maokou village is proved to be the center of Chin's Ancient Yelang capital by the experts related, and it is also the place where Chinese famous Maokou Limestone was found.
The foundation of Liupanshui city was formally approved by the State Council in 1978, with its total land area of 9,914 square kilometers and its population of 3 million. It municipally administrates four county-level districts of Liuzhi, Panxian, Shuicheng and Zhongshan. The central city proper lies at Zhongshan district, which covers the land of more than 40 square kilometers and has the population of nearly 400 thousand. In 2002, it was proved by the state that the area of the city's present center would be turned into 127.7 square kilometers and the project-controlled area would be 502 square kilometers, and the population would be developed into 0.5 to 1 million.
The rapid development of Liupanshui City is benefited from the abundant underground coal resources. The prospective deposits of coal resources are 56.9 billion tons, including 17.4 billion tons of proven coal deposits with its all coal kinds and fine coal quality. From 1964, the nation has set up Coal Mine Construction Command Post of Southwestern China and began exploiting the coal mines resource in a big scale. At that time, Chinese government leader Deng Xiaoping has come for an inspection, and in 1980s and 1990s, Mr.Jiang Zeming and Hu Jintao have come for an inspection in succession. Nowadays, there are some key enterprises such as Panjiang Coal and Electricity (Group) Company, Shuicheng Mines (Group) Company and Liuzhi Industrial Mines (Group) Company in Liupanshui. On the basis of coal mining, the industries of steel and iron, electricity, cement and aluminum grow vigorously and become the pillar industries of Liupanshui City. It would be a big development of production capacity within recent years, the raw coal would be 80 million tons from 32 million tons, steel would be 5 million tons from 2 million tons, the electricity installation capacity would be 10 million kilowatts from 1.39 million kilowatts. At the same time, the exploitation and construction power of the coal chemical industry will be reinforced to break through the fields of coal coking and liquid coal. Except for coal, there are many kinds of mineral resources like lead and zinc, gold, manganese mine and so on in Liupanshui City.

Liupanshui is young and developing industrial city. The construction of Liupanshui City proper is sped up continuously with the development of economy strength. In recent years, the development of basic municipal construction has been quickened distinctively, the reconstruction of Zhongshan Avenue is completed and it is 20km long and 60m wide through the city's heart. In the center, some public constructions have been completed and put into operation, namely, Minghu Viaduct, White Crane Viaduct, Longjing Cubic Crossbridge, Fengchi Park and Qilin Park. Not only is the whole central area connected, but the city also has been given with the bright landscapes one after another and provided townspeople with public places of relaxation and entertainment. In 2005, Renmin Street and Cool City Road are being reconstructed. There are many big supermarkets and 3-star hotels in the urban district of Liupanshui, and a 4-star hotel and a big square of 100,000㎡ are being constructed, a 5-star hotel is being made preparations for construction.

The tourism and sightseeing industry of Liupanshui City has great potentiality of development. The peculiar geological karst topography and sightseeing give the city splendid charm. The urban district is on the karst depression, and surrounded by hundreds of karst hills shaped like awls solitarily. Professor Fexier from Vienna university of Austria has highly praised it as the Eastern Geneva and Plateau Venice. There are many spectacular karst landforms in Liupanshui, such as the highest natural highway bridge (136m height) in the world, the deepest karst vertical silo (424m depth) in the world, and under where you can see the blue sky if is sunny, the biggest diameter karst pit in China (760m diameter and 240m depth), and various kinds of canyons like Beipan river canyon (80km length and 1,000m height) on which hundreds of nation first-grade protective monkey (named Presbytis Francoisi) live, Liuchehe gorge is so beautiful like an Chinese painting, and many kinds of splendid karst caves viewing like Biyun Cave, Liangfeng Cave, Xingxiu Cave, etc. which attracting experts from Austria, Belgium, Span, France, Romania come for investigation. Chinese famous ancient traveler Xu Xiake visited Biyun Cave and Mountain Danxia in 1638. The underground cave of Ale River has been utilized as a scenic spot, and a hydropower station was constructed on Gesuo River for the hight differences of water level in cave.

At Xinmin Village of Panxian County were dug out complete and various fossils of creepy animals living in the sea, which include mixosaurus, nothosaurus and protodinosaurus with the geological time of 240 million years in the Triassic period. The Suojia Ecology Museum in Liuzhi, the first human ecological museum of China, is built in aid of Norway, which protects the minority culture and customs of Long-horn Miao people. There are considerably large scale of nation-grade protective rare plant in Liupanshui, like the dove tree in Yushe nation-grade forest park which is about 2,000m above sea level, the thousand-year ancient ginkgo group at Tuole of Panxian, the ancient and natural azalea forests of 1,000 years old at Huopu of Panxian. The charming and colorful minority nationalities styles and folk cultures are deeply loved and appreciated by the friends home and abroad, such as Yi people's Torch Festival, Miao people's Tiaohua Festival, Bouyei people's Liuyueliu Festival, and the Cultural Day of cool city on every August since 2004, etc., which attract more and more tourists come for a visit.