It borders Xinyang to the south, Nanyang to the west, Pingdingshan to the northwest, Luohe to the north, Zhoukou to the northeast, and the province of Anhui to the east.

As of the 2020 Chinese census, its total population was 7,008,427 inhabitants whom 1,466,913 lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of Yicheng District and Suiping County now conurbated.

[9] This may have originated from the aftermath of the 1975 Banqiao Dam collapse, when locals affected by the disaster eventually become the first large batch of migrant workers to go to Guangdong.

The failure of the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams in 1975, which caused more than 150,000 casualties and made more than 10 million people homeless, is considered the biggest catastrophe of its kind.

The old Golden Decade-built Zhumadian Aerodrome primarily served military operations from 1931 until late-2018, when it was converted for commercial passenger airliner use as well.