The award ceremony of China's happiest cities of 2010 was held on Sunday in Changsha by the Oriental Outlook Weekly under the Xinhua News Agency and 20 cities received the award of the happiest, with Hangzhou topping the list.

Among the award-receiving are Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, Chengdu in Sichuan Province, Changsha in Hunan Province, Kunming in Yunnan Province, Nanjing in Jiangsu Province, Changchun in Jilin Province, Chongqing, Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, Tonghua in Jilin Province, Wuxi in Jiangsu Province (city-level); Jiangyin, Yixing, Changsha, Yuyao, Tengzhou, Tongliang, Haicheng, Taicang, Laizhou, Jiaozhou (county-level).

The organizing committee adopted the evaluation system from the Chinese City's Happiness Index Assessment Center, under the Oriental Outlook Weekly, and regarded environment, human kindness, traffic conditions, medical conditions, quality of education, house prices, etc in the judgment process.

Besides, Hangzhou and Chengdu got the highest honor on special livelihood contribution award; Kunming, Changsha, Changchun got the golden award; Yixing, Yuyao got the livelihood contribution award; Changsha got the livelihood satisfaction award.

"Livelihood" was the key word of the ceremony. Leaders from the 20 cities were presented the award by the cities' respective residents. Meng Jian, a professor from the School of Journalism at Fudan University, said, "The 'happiest' award implied ordinary people's acknowledgement to leaders' ability to govern a city, the confirmation to a city's livable level and the expectation to a city's future development."