Having a life filled with romance is everyone's dream. Recently, Amazon China released a ranking of the most romantic cities on the Chinese mainland. Henan's Zhengzhou tops the list, followed by Inner Mongolia's Erdos and Baotou.

The ranking is based on the entire country's sales of love-, wedding- and romance-themed books, e-books and CDs in 2014.

The results show that the number of cities in northern China exceeds the cities in southern China in the ranking for the first time and the nation's smaller cities are much more passion-filled than the big ones.

In terms of traditional cultural activities and romantic events, there are more going on in the big cities, but the statistics now show us that the smaller cities are in fact more romantic in heart and mind.

Among the top 10 cities, none of them have been included in the top 10 GDP list and only Zhengzhou is a provincial capital. Except for the sub-provincial city of Ningbo, the remaining seven are all prefecture-level cities. The residents there simply live less stressful lives and have more time on their hands to actually enjoy life.

"It shows to some extent that residents living less stressful lives are more are more willing to read romantic works,” said the publisher of the list.

Beijing, China's political and cultural center, Shanghai, widely regarded as a romantic city, Guangzhou, a place to enjoy life and Shenzhen, the most competitive center all failed to squeeze into the list, ranking below 40th.