Qingliu City had once been a beautiful city with a leisurely pace of life, filled with lovely natural and artificial lakes and ponds, and many urban gardens built around them where residents could relax and enjoy themselves.
Some said that although Qingliu City was clearly a modern city, its downtown had more lakes, ponds, gardens, and parks than high-rise buildings, making it a very strange place.
Perhaps that was precisely why Qingliu City had been named the "city with the happiest residents" so many times. There were rarely crowds hurrying along its streets. Even before work each day, the people of Qingliu City liked to sit beside a lake or pond near their homes, beneath willow trees swaying in the breeze, chatting with friends or simply letting their minds wander alone.
Honghuai City, next door to Qingliu City, was a thriving city that had developed rapidly in recent years, so rapidly that ordinary people felt they could barely keep up. Its streets were full of busy pedestrians, and even late at night, there were still exhausted people working overtime and students attending extra classes to prepare for exams.
To the people of Qingliu City, although Honghuai City was putting up high-rises at an astonishing rate, there were so many of them in its central districts that they could even block out the sky and sunlight.
What the people of Qingliu City found most incomprehensible was that Honghuai City would even tear down its street-side parks to build new high-rises!
Looking at the bustling Honghuai City next door, the people of Qingliu City felt happier still.
But lately, Qingliu City had stopped feeling like Qingliu City.
The streets were still the same streets, the parks were still the same parks, and the waters of its lakes and ponds remained calm, yet