Jian'ou is within a major bamboo and rice-growing area on Jianxi Brook, about 70 kilometres (43 mi) south from Jianyang.

Along with Fuzhou, they were the earliest-established Chinese territories in the area and thus their province bears their conjoined names: Fu & Jian.

In his Travels, dictated seven years later to a scribe writing in Old French, the name Jianning-fu is romanised as Quenlinfu.

I have been told, but did not myself see the animal, that there are found at this place a species of domestic fowls which have no feathers, their skins being clothed with black hair, resembling the fur of cats.

Jian'ou was made the capital of the local lu, a collection of prefectures still smaller than a province, and was renamed Jianning-Lu accordingly.