Zhenjiang is obviously located in the south of the Yangtze River, but why is it rarely considered as the south of Jiangsu?

Because the local dialect spoken in Zhenjiang is mainly Jianghuai Mandarin, although Zhenjiang is located in the south of the Yangtze River, its accent belongs to the same dialect system as Yangzhou and Taizhou, but it is different from Suzhou and Xichang. Therefore, except Zhenjiang people, other cities in Jiangsu do not regard Zhenjiang as southern Jiangsu. They think that only talking about Wu Can counts as Jiangnan or Sunan. Of course, Zhenjiang still belongs to five cities in southern Jiangsu, including Nanjing.

Speaking of the city of Jiangsu, many people may know that although Jiangsu is not a big city, its economy is very developed, its gdp has always been the second in the country, second only to Guangdong, its educational strength is also in the forefront of the country, and its economic development is relatively balanced. Although northern Jiangsu is not as developed as southern Jiangsu, it is still very developed in the whole country. Many people basically divide southern Jiangsu into the north and south of the Yangtze River. However, there is also a strange phenomenon, that is, Zhenjiang is obviously located in the south of the Yangtze River, but it is regarded as the middle of Jiangsu or northern Jiangsu by other cities in Jiangsu. In short, Zhenjiang is a city in southern Jiangsu, and few other cities think so except locals.

Zhenjiang is not considered to belong to southern Jiangsu because of dialect. Although Zhenjiang is located in the south of the Yangtze River, the local dialect is different from the mainstream dialect in the south of the Yangtze River. For example, Suzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai, Huzhou and Jiaxing all speak Wu dialect, while Zhenjiang dialect belongs to Jianghuai Mandarin, Taizhou and Yangzhou belong to a dialect cultural circle, and Yang Tai area already belongs to a city in northern Jiangsu, so Zhenjiang is indeed more like a city in northern Jiangsu in dialect culture.

There is even a wonderful phenomenon, that is, Wu dialect is not only distributed in southern Jiangsu, but also Qidong and Haimen below Nantong in the north of the Yangtze River belong to Wu dialect area. However, although Zhenjiang does not speak Wu dialect, it still belongs to five cities in southern Jiangsu in administrative area. Although the area of Zhenjiang is small and its people are very rich, the development of the city has been relatively slow in recent years due to its limited scale.