The happiest cities to live in China
By Jeff Pan (Chinadaily.com.cn)Updated: 2007-03-19 15:26
To say "I love my city and want to stay here" isn't easy. The city has to provide enough reasons for its dwellers to love.
According to a recent survey jointly conducted by Orient Outlook and
Christopher Hsee, a chair professor at the University of Chicago, whether the
residents in major Chinese cities feel happy is closely related to interpersonal
relations, living convenience, natural environment, opportunities to make money,
culture and entertainment, along with overall economic development. 
The economic condition of the city has been played down, while a number of "soft factors" like architectural aesthetics and safety are given much more attention by many participants of the survey. According to Hsee, increasing number of people begin to look for things beyond mere economic consideration as the food and clothing problems are solved for most Chinese living in the urban areas.
Hangzhou, Lhasa, and Nanning top the list of the cities in which their citizens feel most happy, surpassing Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, three most economically-advanced metropolises in China. Higher incomes in the economic powerhouses fail to convert to the same degree of happiness.
Beyond how much money earned, a number of other factors that have been rarely mentioned previously also matter a lot to the quality of life. For instance, the transportation condition is an important indicator of how happy people feel about their own cities. Three capital cities with less glistening economic developments, namely, Yinchuan of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Lhasa of Tibetan Autonomous Region, and Haikou of Hainan Province, are the places where their inhabitants feel most satisfied about the cities' traffics, largely due to the relatively small scale of population in these capitals.
The report shows the degree of happiness increases by 0.02% as people's houses augment every ten square meters, while the degree of happiness grows by 0.03% if their daily routine transportation to work can be cut by ten minutes. Orient Outlook maintains that ten minutes less on the roads contribute to the level of people's happiness as much as that of 15 square meters more living room can bring.
Nevertheless, major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou are still the most attractive cities for people from outside. When asked whether citizens would like to stay in the cities they are in now, Hangzhou ranks first with 78% of its dwellers choosing to stay there. Haikou has also convinced 74% of its people it's better to stay there, while Chengdu (72%), Kunming (67%), and Shanghai (63%) follow.
Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Beijing are the top cities people wish their children to also stay in. Beijing, Shanghai, and Haikou are the cities people would love their kids to move to.
Lhasa also ranks first in a number of indicators for happiness including the interpersonal relations, opportunity to make money, and recent development. However, only 49% of its residents wish to stay here in future, and 50% want their kids to stay in China's remote west.
According to Hsee, the economic development is not the prime factor to influence people's decision about whether to stay in the same city, while many people still consider the economic powerhouses the ideal destinations for their children. Hsee believes this discovery holds referential significance to the outline and blueprint of Chinese cities.
The survey covered 31 major Chinese cities, including four municipalities
directly under the Central Government, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and
Chongqing, as well as 27 provincial capitals. The survey was published in
mid-February's issue of Orient Outlook.
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