What is it about Szechuan girls?

Throughout China, everyone says that the girls from Szechuan province in the far west are the prettiest.

I've often found it a curious phenomenon that while the Chinese - both men and women - are invariably fiercely, delusionally proud of their local cuisine ("Oh, they claim that's a Fujian dish, but actually we invented it." "Well, they do something like this in Szechuan, but our version is much better."), they tend to be a little disparaging of the pulchritude of their womenfolk ("Oh, our girls are not so beautiful. You need to go to the next province to see some real lookers. [Pause. Sigh.] But of course, the greatest beauties are all from Szechuan.").

I was interested then, on finally visiting this fabled province, to find out if the principle would hold true here as well - would they be modestly dismissive of their own Szechuan girls and praise up their neighbours in Yunnan or Gansu instead? Er, NO - with a lack of false modesty quite untypical (and rather refreshing!) for the Chinese, they all said: "Oh yes, that's right. Szechuan girls are famous all over China. They're knockouts."

I have to say - from this one brief experience - there may be something to that: I certainly saw more good-looking girls in 36 hours in one small town/University campus than I do in a typical month in lumpy, frumpy Beijing..... including a couple of real stunners.

However...... I find I may be dissenting slightly from the accepted wisdom. The most gorgeous girl I met there was actually from Hunan - the adjacent province east and a little south of Szechuan. I reflect that the only two really pretty Chinese girls I've met in Beijing were both from Hunan as well (well, OK, there was also one from Hainan, much further south; but I'm working on a theory here..... extraneous data must be discounted for the time being!). I think there's definitely some significance in that.

I must plan a fact-finding mission to Hunan. I'll let you know the results.