Abstract: The idea of livable city is in the spotlight in China recently,not only the government,but also the researchers and the media have paid attention to the livable city.But it’s a pity that the livable city’s concept and relevant standard are not clear.Reflections on how to define livable city were discussed in the paper.Besides,questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were combined to discuss the livability of Guangzhou from the prospective of some particular citizens,the professional housewives who emigrating from Japan into Guangzhou.All of those Japanese housewives are members of Japanese women’s association of Guangzhou (JWAG),they have only involved the living space and have separated from the production space for some reasons.So their evaluations of Guangzhou city’s livability are objective and relatively neutral.Besides,their home country,Japan,can also offer some meaningful references for Chinese urban development.Therefore,based on the perspective of Japanese housewives,the results of this research,are meaningful to international construction of Chinese metropolis and livable construction of people-oriented city.The evaluation method of this study mainly takes Japanese assessment on "livable city" as a reference.And the public security,housing,insurance,transportation,medical care,education,shopping,food,environment,climate,culture,entertainment and human relationship were taken as the evaluated factors to assess the livable characteristics from five aspects:the living safety,living conditions,affluence,convenience and comfort.Scores were designed to:5 points stands for great satisfaction;4 points refers to quite satisfaction;3 points means general satisfaction;2 points means dissatisfaction;1 point shows rather dissatisfaction.According to those Japanese housewives’ contrast between Japanese cities and Guangzhou,the degree of livability and the main aspects of improvement in Guangzhou were well discussed.Except living condition,other aspects were worse than those in Japan from Japanese housewives’ point of view,especially the data of medical care,education,environment,shopping and entertainment,which were over 2 times less than those of Japan.The result showed that there was a big problem in the convenience and comfort of Guangzhou.In the Japanese housewives opinion,there is a long way to go in order to become a real livable city for Guangzhou.For one thing,its degree of livability is low.For another,both those housewives’ special cultural background,overseas experience,role concepts,and their residence time in Guangzhou also effect on the evaluated results.