Among the local customs and proverbs in China, "There is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below" should be regarded as the most widely circulated. Wei Zhuang's words once said: "Everyone says that Jiangnan is good, and wanderers only vote for Jiangnan to grow old together." Spring water is bluer than the sky, and the painting boat sleeps in the rain. "
As for its origin, people who study proverbs at present can only cite late documentary evidence. Among them, seven manuscripts and records in ancient and modern novels are cited more, but they are all from Ming Dynasty. In the later southern Jiangsu folk song "Scenery of Gusu", also known as "The Nine Chains", it was also sung: "There is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below", "Hangzhou West Lake and Suzhou have no mountain ponds, alas, two good places."
But in fact, the saying that there is heaven in the world and Suzhou and Hangzhou in the world has obviously been around for a long time. According to the examination, the saying that there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty.
Can be divided into two parts. The former part compares Jiangnan to heaven. Ren Hua, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, praised "People say you are from Jiangnan, but I say you are from Heaven!" It can be regarded as the origin of comparing Jiangnan to heaven. In the second half, Suzhou and Hangzhou were the representatives of Jiangnan, which was obvious in the late Tang Dynasty. Among them, the title of Bai Juyi plays a key role. Bai Juyi used to be the secretariat of Hangzhou and Suzhou, and wrote many poems praising the local areas during his tenure in these two States. At first, he just praised Hangzhou. When he was appointed as the secretariat of Hangzhou, he boasted to Yuan Zhen, the secretariat of Yuezhou, saying, "Knowing that you stole several counties in the south of the Yangtze River, Hangzhou is not as good as Hangzhou." Later, he was appointed as the secretariat of Suzhou, and called Suzhou "a county that is famous for its world and surrounded by the sea." Later known as Suzhou and Hangzhou, he is quite proud of being the "master of Suzhou and Hangzhou". When I returned to the north in my later years, I was also obsessed with Suzhou and Hangzhou. In a poem with Yin, he wrote: "Suzhou and Hangzhou are famous counties in the south of the Yangtze River, which were written in Yin family for thirty times. Your memory of being a traveler is still bitter, but I will never forget the Secretariat. The situation leads to the poetry of the country, and it is good to get drunk. " In order to miss the past, the ship went straight to Canglang. It goes without saying that "there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below" is a collection of Bai Juyi's questions and a word-of-mouth metaphor for heaven in Jiangnan.