Heze (simplified Chinese: 菏泽; traditional Chinese: 菏澤; pinyin: Hézé) is a prefecture-level city in southwestern Shandong province, People's Republic of China. The westernmost prefecture-level city in Shandong, it borders Jining to the east and the provinces of Henan and Anhui to the west and south respectively. The old name of Heze was Caozhou (曹州; Cáozhōu) and now a part of the city bears this name. The first character in the city's name is sometimes incorrectly written as "荷" instead.