Suzhou and Hangzhou were once hailed as paradise by the ancients, why are Nanjing and Yangzhou not paradise?

The beautiful land in the south of the Yangtze River, the Jinling Empire, this is realistic. There is heaven, there is Suzhou and Hangzhou. The true meaning of this statement may be very different from the understanding of many people in modern times. This sentence originated from Wu Junzhi of Fan Chengda in the Song Dynasty. Infertility is actually a range, a large geographical concept, roughly equivalent to the current southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and Shanghai. This is generally understood as the Taihu Basin or Jiangnan in a narrow sense. Having said this, I am afraid many people understand that the original meaning of Suzhou and Hangzhou here does not only refer to the two cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou, but actually refers to the narrow and long Jiangnan area represented by Suzhou and Hangzhou. In other words, it actually includes the current Changzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai, Jiangsu, as well as Huzhou and Jiaxing. Precisely because Suzhou and Hangzhou are relatively prominent cities, the literary rhetoric method of using parts to refer to the whole, represented by them, is called borrowing.

In fact, this sentence itself does not have an either/or opposition. After all, it is only used to praise the prosperity of the Jiangnan region, but does not deny other regions. Since the Soochow Dynasty, except for Hangzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty, the political center of southern China has been Nanjing. As far as China as a whole is concerned, Nanjing's political, historical and cultural accumulation can be compared with the other three ancient capitals Beijing, Xi'an and Luoyang. Before the decline of the canal, Yangzhou was a gateway city for north-south transportation, and its economic prosperity was definitely no less than that of Jiangsu and Hangzhou. In terms of confidence, these two cities don't need such words to paint themselves over. There are countless famous ancient poems and lines recited in these two places, so there is no need to worry about a common saying.

I personally think Yangzhou is very good now, a medium-sized city, beautiful, livable and comfortable. Therefore, if your family is not rich and there is surplus food in the warehouse, you will not panic; if you are not on the table but have poems in your stomach; if the city is not big, you can live healthily, happily and peacefully! The pure land that literati and poor people yearn for! Nanjing is the seat of the nobility, the three religions, and the ninth rank! The difference is status and position. The so-called heaven is in people's hearts.

Isn’t Nanjing a paradise among the rich and powerful?