When happiness becomes such a hot topic, there must be something that prevents people from being happy. An increasing number of Chinese cities have put forward the goal of building their cities into a happy city. How can they do that? Even if a city government issues cash to citizens once in a while, they will feel happy only at the moment they receive the money. It is impossible for a city to make its citizens happy all the time.

What these cities need to do is to reduce the things that make people unhappy.

For example, if a city's roads are dug up frequently and it is difficult for people to travel and the streets are full of dust, most people will undoubtedly feel unhappy. If reports of food safety hazards make people worry about food, how can they feel happy? If the air is heavily polluted and people rarely see a clear sky all year round, it will be impossible for them to be happy. If most city streets are messy and dirty, it seems unlikely that people will be happy. If you're not properly received or treated when you're trying to get something done at a government department, will you feel happy?

So instead of asking people the question: "Are you happy?" people should be asked what are the major factors that make them unhappy. Then what the city authorities need to do is to try to reduce these, so that there are fewer things that cause unhappiness in daily life.

Although happiness is always described as the goal people are pursuing in life, people are usually neither happy nor unhappy most of the time. In other words, the fewer factors there are that make people unhappy the less unhappy they will be.

In this sense, "building a happy city" is anything but a concrete promise since the chances of reducing the degree of people's unhappiness by doing a few things is greater than the chances of making them happy.

City governments should set the goal of making their cities more livable, rather than happy.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily.