Hohhot staged a ceremony to award role models in the city on May 31, 2016. [Photo/hhhtnews.com]

Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia autonomous region, has won a significant number of national honors and titles for its remarkable pace of economic and social development, the scale of its transformation in urban and rural areas, along with society's stability since 2011. It marks an extraordinary turning point on the way to building a moderately prosperous, rejuvenated and civilized city.

In the past five years, the city has been included on lists of China's civilized cities, happiest cities, historical and cultural cities, forest cities, pilot innovation cities, nationalities unity and progress model cities, excellent tourist cities, dairy cities, e-commerce development model cities, and pilot smart cities. 

National Civilized City

Hohhot was bestowed with the title as a nationally nominated civilized city at the fourth session of the national awards conference held on Feb 28, 2015, in Beijing, by the Central Institute of Civilization for creating a civilized city. 

The contest of "National Civilized City" is held every three years and the title is the highest honor in recognizing a city's overall economic competitiveness and comprehensive social civilization. 

China's Happiest City

The "Everyone's Voice, Everyone's Life" program co-hosted by China Central Television Finance Channel, National Bureau of Statistics, China Post Group and National School of Development since 2006, held a press conference on Mar 11, 2014, to reveal the country's top 20 happiest cities from 2013 to 2014. Hohhot was rated as one of the happiest cities in the country for the first time.

The program revealed that Hohhot is the sixth happiest capital city, out of the top 10 ranked capital cities in China at the awards ceremony on Feb 23, 2015.   

The "Everyone's Voice, Everyone's Life" program is the largest life survey in China, and has based its findings on statistics and polls from at least 100,000 door-to-door interviews and big data analytical techniques.

National Famous Historical and Cultural City

Hohhot has been considered a birthplace of China's ancient civilization with a long history and rich cultural heritage.

It possesses the Dayao Cultural Site which was once used as a place for making stone implements 700,000 years ago, the Great Wall of Zhao State built during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), and the Tomb of Wang Zhaojun –– built to commemorate the maid who once offered to marry the chief Huhanye of Xiongnu Horde as a peace envoy. 

Its Temple of the Five Pagodas, also known as the "Precious Pagoda of the Buddhist Relics of the Diamond Throne", includes a rare Mongolian cosmological map carved into a large stone, which illustrates the zodiac and positions of numerous stars inside it. 

Hohhot once acted as a transit point along the grassland Silk Road connecting western China, Mongolia, Central Asia and Russia, for silk, cloth and tea trading. 

It is close to the Yellow River, and has been an integral part of the culture of the river and the grasslands, nomadic civilization and agricultural civilization.