Perhaps many people know the phrase "there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below"; But they often just say "as the saying goes" or "as the ancients said", and I don't know where these two words come from.
In fact, "There is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below" was written by Orton Zhou Qing, a native of the early Yuan Dynasty. He once wrote two songs, Double Harmony and Moon Song, to describe the beautiful scenery of Suzhou and Hangzhou.
Oden Zhou Qing s Two Songs of the Moon (Ⅱ);
The West Lake is full of smoke and water. A hundred hectares of wind pool, ten miles of lotus fragrance. Appropriate rain should be sunny, appropriate makeup should be beautiful, and heavy makeup should be light makeup. Holding the painted boat end to end, the cheers were endless. Bloom is warm in spring and healthy in old age. There is indeed heaven in the world and Suzhou and Hangzhou in the world.
Orton is the surname of Jurchen, and Zhou Qing is his first name. This man was a judge in the general manager's office of Huaimeng Road (now near Mengxian County, Henan Province) from the Yuan Dynasty to the first year (1269), and later served as a judge, judge and consultant in Nandao, Hebei Province.
Obviously, there is a long-standing saying that there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below, but at present, people who study proverbs can only cite late documentary evidence. More familiar are the seven manuscripts and ancient and modern novels, all of which are from the Ming Dynasty. In addition, the southern Jiangsu folk song "Scenery of Gusu" also sings at the beginning: "There is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below", but this song, also known as "Dajiuhuan", is composed of several folk songs, and the scenery of the two places is really sung behind it: "West Lake in Hangzhou, Suzhou has no mountain ponds, alas, two good places." Obviously, it doesn't have an ancient origin like another famous folk song "Moon Bends in Kyushu". The latter has been circulating since the Southern Song Dynasty.
Poets in the Tang Dynasty set a precedent.
The author thinks that the saying that "there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below" can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty at the earliest. Can be divided into two halves, the first half is to compare Jiangnan to heaven. Ren Hua, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, once chanted in the master cursive music of Huai Su: "People say you are from Jiangnan, but I say you are from heaven!" This should be the origin of comparing Jiangnan to heaven. Before this, Jiangnan was called "the land of beauty" because of the prosperity of the Southern Dynasties, and there was no precedent to compare it with the sky. The title of "Kerry Land" continued in the Tang Dynasty, and there was a tendency to push other places out of this ranks.
The title of Bai Juyi is the key.
The other half took Suzhou and Hangzhou as the top card in Jiangnan, which was also obvious in the late Tang Dynasty. The key is Bai Juyi's product title. 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. However, at first, he only praised Hangzhou. When he was the secretariat of Hangzhou, he once boasted with Yuan Zhen, the secretariat of Yuezhou, that "Knowing the monarch is plotting against the counties in the south of the Yangtze River, except Hangzhou." Later, it was the secretariat of Suzhou, also known as Suzhou's "one county is the best in the world, surrounded by extremely seaside". Since then, they have been called Suzhou and Hangzhou, and they are quite proud of being "the Lord of Suzhou and Hangzhou". In his later years, he returned to the north, especially for Suzhou and Hangzhou. In a poem with Yin, he wrote: "Suzhou and Hangzhou, a famous county in the south of the Yangtze River, was written in chapter 30 of Yin Jia. 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 old tour, the ship will go straight to Canglang. " It goes without saying that "there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below" is the confluence of this topic, and it is also a word-of-mouth metaphor for heaven in Jiangnan.
Praising heaven is not just about wealth.
Suzhou and Hangzhou are so highly respected, which is undoubtedly related to their wealth. But it doesn't all fall from the sky. Looking around, we can find that there were many famous counties in the south of the Yangtze River at that time, such as Changzhou and Huzhou, and their wealth was well-known. Changzhou was promoted by Li Hua as a "famous state outside the customs", and Huzhou even got the evaluation of "the big river table and Xing Wu are one" in Gu Kuang. Those places have not become the crown of Jiangnan, which is largely related to their natural scenery. Bai Juyi once praised: "Hangzhou is beautiful and healthy, and the Soviets are rich and vulgar." This poem shows that the two places have their own characteristics: "Li", which is irreplaceable by the word rich. He also described the scenic spot of Hangzhou in the famous article "Recalling Jiangnan": "Looking for laurel trees in the Moon Zhongshan Temple, watching the tide on the pillow in the county pavilion." Suzhou's joy is "Wu wine and a cup of spring bamboo leaves, Wu Wa dances and Lotus is drunk." For many people, this kind of scene can only be enjoyed in the sky.