Everyone wishes to find a pleasant place to live in with warm sunshine and gentle breeze, just enjoying the easy life. Fortunately, there are four cities in China, namely, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing and Lijiang, which can realize your long dream for living away from the noise of the world.

Hangzhou: West Lake, tea-drinking

You will find some unique and fancy teahouses, cafes as well as pubs set each other off with green and luxuriant trees on the shore of the West Lake. People can stroll along the shore of the lake in knots in sunny days, enjoying weeping willow stroking the face and appreciating the enchanting scenery of bright ripples. When it rains, misty rain would add more beauty to the West Lake. Chanting with intimate friends while drinking a cup of tea on the shore will be of pleasant enjoyment.

Chengdu: teahouses, majhong

Chengdu boosts itself to be a city people feel hard to say goodbye to once came. This is the very reason for the southwest city to be frequently listed as one of the Chinese cities suitable for mind cultivation and living.

Indeed, Chengdu deserves it! You will find numerous teahouses of various styles in winding alleyways. Many local residents place themselves in the teahouses, listening to storytelling or gossiping. The city in this sense is really an exception in consideration to high rhythm of living these days. There are countless Chengdu residents taking walks with their caged birds, and particularly, people playing majhong is regarded as another unique scenery in the city.

Chongqing: night scene and delicious foods

For tourists from other places, "Night scene of Mountain City" is a resounding fame of Chongqing for years. Although there are fewer "Diaojiao Lou" (house projecting over the water) left, Chongqing still deserves the laudatory title. Towers built at the foot of the mountain, road that radiating in all directions as well as the city surrounded by Yangtze and Jialing River ¡­ The city's invert reflection in the water has changed a lot, but what has not changed are the city's feelings: a perfect mixture of powerfulness and tenderness.

Cuisine in Chongqing is as famous as the powerfulness of local residents, and the two deeply affect each other in a mutual way. Residents, dripping with sweat but impassioned and forceful, still enjoy the hotpot and beer barebacked even if in dog days. Their love toward fine cuisine stems from their altitude toward life.

Lijiang: snow-capped mountains, ancient towns

Once a tranquil town at the foot of snow-capped mountain, the city of Lijiang now has become an ideal tourism destination throughout the country, the sacred and natural holy land in the heart of numerous people.

Roaming leisurely along the brooks in Lijiang, you will find time seems to have stopped, and what have been left over are merely slab stone, dwelling houses passed down from generations as well as the easy life.

In the early morning, quietness and warmth prevails the city just as in the past; in the late night, feasts and revelry make the ancient city the one never sleeps.

(People's Daily May 19, 2006)