Mike is a landscape architect (设计师) from Europe. He came to Guangzhou 16 years ago and has never left since then.

Mike says he likes Guangzhou very much ____1____ the city is full of life. He lives in a traditional neighborhood. Every day, he can see his neighbors playing chess in the park, dancing ____2____ the river or chatting in the market. Mike ____3____ seeing these moments. He thinks the ____4____ of a city lies in both its people and its environment. “When people are connected to a place, it brings life to it,” Mike says.

Recently, Mike has formed a habit of cycling around to ____5____ the city at weekends. He says he loves to see old neighborhoods take on a ____6____ look. For him, city development is not about building ____7____ new, but about making use of what’s already there in a creative way. His favorite ____8____ is a car repair shop near his home. As people get together there at night and give some ____9____ of Guangdong opera, the shop turns into a community theater. “It wasn’t designed to be one; it just became one,” Mike tells a reporter. “This influenced me _____10_____. I came to realize that, as architects, we should design with people to keep a city alive.”