On June 21, during the release of the Blue Book of Healthy Living: Annual Report on China’s Healthy Living Industry Development (2024–2025) in Liupanshui City, Guizhou Province, the list of China’s Top 20 Sustainable Healthy Living Cities for 2025 was announced. Lishui stood out as the only city in Zhejiang Province to make the list. This marks the sixth consecutive year that Lishui has been included in this ranking.

Against the backdrop of the steady advancement of the Healthy China strategy and the accelerating trend of population aging, the healthy living industry has become a vital pillar for ensuring public well-being and driving economic growth. The Top 20 Sustainable Healthy Living Cities list is the only dynamic regional assessment in China’s healthy living sector that has been consistently conducted over the years, serving as a benchmark for the industry.

The list is compiled through systematic research and data analysis of 330 administrative units across the country. It scientifically evaluates each region’s healthy living resources, ecological environment, service facilities, and industrial development levels, establishing an evaluation system with both policy reference value and market-oriented significance. This provides crucial decision-making guidance for regional healthy living industry planning and collaboration.

As the only prefecture-level “Hometown of Longevity” in China, a key national city for actively addressing population aging, and a model city for healthy urban development, Lishui boasts pristine mountains, clean water, excellent air quality, and a long-living population. By vigorously developing its healthy living industry, the city continues to polish the golden IP of “Healthy Living in Lishui”.

To meet the healthy living demands across all life stages, Lishui actively promotes initiatives such as the “Healthy Living 600” project and forest-based wellness programs. It prioritizes the development of industries like traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) healthcare, wellness, elderly care services, and sports leisure, exploring diversified “Healthy Living +” pathways. The city fosters leisure and wellness industries centered on “nutritional therapy”, “TCM remedies”, “hydrotherapy”, “fitness regimens”, “cultural enrichment”, and “breathing & energy cultivation”. It integrates tourism, experiential activities, healing, and study tours across the region, upgrading health-oriented travel into experiential, therapeutic, and immersive formats, aiming to build a premier healthy living and travel destination in the Yangtze River Delta and nationwide.

Lishui City is home to 2,478 varieties of medicinal herbs, accounting for 85% of Zhejiang Province's total, earning its reputation as a “natural medicinal garden”. Leveraging these unique resources, the city focuses on developing the TCM-based health industry, striving to become a “new hub for modern TCM and health industries in Zhejiang” and a “TCM remedy destination in the Yangtze River Delta”. Currently, the city's medicinal herb cultivation spans 329,700 mu (about 21,980 hectares), forming a specialized industrial cluster that includes TCM decoction pieces, patented medicines, plant extracts, and health products.

Given its mountainous terrain, Lishui adheres to a service philosophy of “demand-driven, bringing care to the elderly”. It targets key groups such as disabled, cognitively impaired, elderly, and empty-nest seniors from low-income families, advancing the “Zhe-Li Longevity – Mountain Elderly Care” initiative. The city implements a new round of elderly care facility planning, strengthening the foundational framework for mountain-based elderly care and setting an example for the “Zhe-Li Healthy Living” golden IP with its distinctive model.