There is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below. Why is Suzhou placed before Hangzhou?

When talking about Suzhou and Hangzhou, people always use the proverb "There is heaven above, and Suzhou and Hangzhou below" as a metaphor.

Paradise, originally a religious term, refers to the paradise world where the gods in the sky and the souls of the world live after death.

Later generations gradually used it to describe a happy and beautiful living environment.

Suzhou and Hangzhou are both famous cultural cities and tourist resorts that were developed earlier in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The Suzhou area was already "a metropolis in the south of the Yangtze River" during the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.

In the Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi said that "Suzhou is the largest among the states in the south of the Yangtze River", and also said that "the people are more crowded than Yangfu, and the streets are full of chaos in half of Chang'an",

Lu Guangwei's "Wu Di Ji" "It is said that "Suzhou has ten famous signs and six heroes". It is the only Xiongzhou in the south of the Yangtze River.

Fan Chengda's "Wujun Zhi" records, "In the Tang Dynasty, Suzhou was prosperous and it was definitely the right side of Zhejiang. First."

It can be seen that Suzhou was the richest in the world during the Tang Dynasty.

In addition, since the Six Dynasties, a large number of northern wealthy families have moved southward and established many private gardens in Suzhou.

Suzhou is unique in the beauty of its mountains and rivers, its gardens, its abundant products, and its local customs. In sharp contrast to the north, which has suffered from years of war, Suzhou is undoubtedly a paradise on earth.

Therefore, by the Song Dynasty, there was a proverb among the people, "Heaven in the sky, Suzhou and Hangzhou in the underground".

Odun Zhouqing in the early Yuan Dynasty used this to describe the beauty, richness and cultural development of Suzhou and Hangzhou in "Double Tune Toad Palace Song": "The West Lake is filled with smoke, a hundred hectares of windy pond, and ten miles of lotus fragrance?" The spring is warm and the flowers are blooming, and the year is prosperous. It is true that there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below." From then on, this folk proverb spread to the north, and was published in "Qi Xiu Lei Manuscript" by Lang Ying of the Ming Dynasty. , Qing Dynasty Li Yu's "Qing Zhongpu" all quoted "There is heaven above, and Suzhou and Hangzhou below".

As for why Suzhou should be placed before Hangzhou, Lang Ying said: "Hangzhou was in the Tang Dynasty, and it was still remote and not visible in a corner, so how could it be merged with it? Since the Spring and Autumn Period, Suzhou has appeared in Wuyue; Hangzhou has only entered After the Song Dynasty, the prosperity was the most prosperous, but Su was not as good as Hangzhou. In terms of money and food, Su was ten times more prosperous than Hangzhou. "

It seems that in the eyes of people in the Ming Dynasty, Suzhou and Hangzhou were not called Suzhou. There is still something to pay attention to. At that time, Suzhou was ten times more prosperous than Hangzhou.

Today, Hangzhou is the capital city of Zhejiang Province, and Suzhou is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu. Suzhou is no longer as large as Hangzhou in terms of city size, so the dispute over the order of paradise between Suzhou and Hangzhou is another one. Words.