Happy Cities of China Forum 2020 is held in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, on Nov 18, 2020. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Ningbo, a coastal city in East China's Zhejiang province, was ranked as one of the happiest cities in China in 2020 during the Happy Cities of China Forum 2020, which took place in the province's capital Hangzhou on Wednesday.

An additional nine cities were included on the list, namely Chengdu in Sichuan, Hangzhou in Zhejiang, Guangzhou in Guangdong, Changsha in Hunan, Nanjing in Jiangsu, Zhengzhou in Henan, Xining in Qinghai, Qingdao in Shandong, and Xi'an in Shaanxi.

This year's appraisal took more than three months, incorporating big data collection, questionnaire surveys, material declaration, and experts' reviews.

Hosted by Oriental Outlook magazine and the Liaowang Institute of the Xinhua News Agency, the selection evaluated cities countrywide over a variety of indexes, spanning employment, resident income, public safety, education, transportation and healthcare.

This is the 11th time for Ningbo to be selected as one of the happiest cities in China. Among the nine sub-indexes, index of income gap between urban and rural residents reached 1.77, lower than the national average of 2.64 this year, said Qiu Dongyao, mayor of Ningbo, adding that the city also excels in the natural environment index and the city attraction index.

In addition, Ningbo's Yinzhou and Zhenhai districts were awarded as the happiest districts during the forum. Cixi and Yuyao also won the title of happiest county-level city.

Cai Jingwen contributed to this story.