Suzhou, known as "Paradise on earth", has been a cradle of talented people for thousands of years.
Many notable people in history are native suzhounese, such as the politician and litterateur Fan Zhongyan, who expressed his political ideal as "Be the first to bear hardships, and the last to enjoy themselves "; the philologist and geographer Gu Yanwu, who advocated that everybody be responsible for the rise and fall of the country; Yan Yan，one of Confucius' ten disciples; the script-sage Zhang Xu; the top sculptor Yang Hui-zhi; the great poet Lu Guimeng; Fan Chengda, one of the four great poets in Southern Song Dynasty; the famous artists, such as Huang Gongwang, Shen Zhou, and Tang Bohu; Kuai Xiang, the supervisor of the construction of Tiananmen Gate; Astronomer Wang Xichan; the famous writer Feng Menglong; the noted physician Ye Gui; Weng Tonghe, a Chinese Confucian scholar and imperial tutor of the Qing Dynasty; Liu Yazi, Chen Qubing, Ye Shengtao, the famous scholars of modern times.
As an old saying goes "the water and soil of one region raise the people of the region". A large number of talented, especially the Imperial Number One Scholars, were emerged in Suzhou. In the Qing Dynasty, there were 26 Imperial Number One Scholars, accounting as 22.81% of the total in the whole country, and 53.06% in Jiangsu Province, which made Suzhou rank No. 1 of average and absolute quantity in the country.
With the fast development in science, a quite large number of scientific and technical elites are needed. So far，Suzhou has 83 academicians of the Chinese Academies of Sciences and Engineering, who have forged ahead in the forefront of world science researches, making important contributions to the development of sciences and technologies in China. Having these great people, Suzhou got profound culture; having these great people, Suzhou became famous all of the world: Suzhou is much proud of having these great people.