Published : 05/11/2025
Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport is one of China's hub airports, and you may not know that it originally used another name when it first opened. It only changed to its current name after entering the 21st century.
The reason for the name change is said to be that the pronunciation of the old name was inauspicious...
Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport was built in 3 years
In August 1980, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was established. The authorities quickly decided to build an airport in the area to support it, and began inviting experts to conduct site selection surveys the following year.
According to media reports, the locations surveyed by experts at the time included more than a dozen places such as Huangtian, Houhai Bay, Xixiang, Yangtai Mountain, Nantou, and Futian.
After comprehensive consideration of factors such as terrain and urban planning, the authorities decided in 1988 to build the airport in Huangtian (黃田) in the western part, and named it "Shenzhen Huangtian Airport" based on its location. At the end of the same year, the airport's ground-breaking ceremony was held in Huangtian Village.
On 12 October 1991, Shenzhen Huangtian Airport, which took less than three years to build, began operations. Its development was as astonishing as its construction speed. By the second year, the passenger throughput of Huangtian Airport reached 1.66 million, joining the ranks of major domestic airports.
Air crash occurred in 1997
By 1998, the airport was upgraded to an international airport, and its full name became "Shenzhen Huangtian International Airport" (深圳黃田國際機場).
When was "Shenzhen Huangtian International Airport" officially changed to the current "Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport" (深圳寶安國際機場)? It was on 18 September 2001.
Regarding this name change, a rumour has always been circulating that "Huangtian" and "huangquan" (黃泉) sound too similar in Chinese, which is considered inauspicious. "Huangquan" refers to the place where the dead are buried and the underworld.
Some people even associated "huangquan" with the earlier "5.8 air crash". On 8 May 1997, a China Southern Airlines passenger plane flying from Chongqing to Shenzhen crashed during landing, resulting in 33 fatalities among the 65 people on board.
"Huangtian" sounds too much like "huangquan"?
Is the claim that the name of Shenzhen airport sounds too similar to "huangquan" credible? And what is the official explanation?
An article on the official website of the Shenzhen Archives, titled "The Origin of Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport", mentioned two reasons for the airport's name change.
First, the airport's site was chosen at the junction of Huangtian Village and Xiashiwei Village in Fuyong Town, with Huangtian Village accounting for about 80% of the land and Xiawei Village about 20%.
But after it was actually built, most of the airport's "red line" boundary was within Xiashiwei Village, so calling the airport "Huangtian" did not match the actual location.
The second reason was "huangquan". The article states: "The word 'Huangtian' sound extremely similar to 'huangquan' in Cantonese and Hokkien, which can easily cause misunderstanding, affect the airport's reputation, and the local populace also had opinions about it."
Renamed to "Bao'an"
From this, it can be seen that the widely circulated rumour was not baseless. Afterwards, Shenzhen applied to the Civil Aviation Administration of China for a name change, and as a result, the airport removed "Huangtian" and adopted the name of its district, "Bao'an" (寶安).
In fact, quite a few airports in China have changed their names. Some added the word "International" to their names after being upgraded to international airports, just like the aforementioned "Shenzhen Huangtian Airport" was renamed "Shenzhen Huangtian International Airport".
Others were renamed for reasons such as improving the local image or raising a place's profile. For example, the airport in Dali, Yunnan Province, was originally named "Dali Huangcaoba Airport" (大理荒草壩機場, "Huangcaoba" means "wild grass dam"), which was later changed to "Dali Fengyi Airport" (大理鳳儀機場), immediately becoming more elegant.
There are many similar examples: "Zhuhai Sanzao Airport" (珠海三灶機場) was renamed "Zhuhai Jinwan Airport" (珠海金灣機場) in 2012; Tianjin Binhai International Airport was called "Zhangguizhuang Airport" (張貴莊機場) before 1995, which many netizens considered "a bit rustic".
Zhangjiajie Airport changed its name completely
In addition, even if the previously mentioned airports were renamed, the city name used as a prefix was supposed to remain unchanged, so what if even the city name was also changed?
Zhangjiajie (張家界) in Hunan Province was originally called "Dayong" (大庸), and the local airport's original name was very direct, called "Dayong Airport".
Later, the scenic spot Zhangjiajie within Dayong's territory became famous, so the airport added this "brand name" and was renamed "Dayong Zhangjiajie Airport". After that, Dayong City was directly renamed "Zhangjiajie City", and the airport thus became the current "Zhangjiajie Hehua Airport" (張家界荷花機場).
As for some new airports completed in recent years, factors such as image and tourism resources were mostly already considered during naming, so names like "Huangcaoba Airport" (荒草壩機場) are unlikely to appear again.
One last point, it was just mentioned that Dayong City was renamed Zhangjiajie City. In fact, in the last 20 to 30 years, quite a number of cities in China have also changed their names. The reasons are also invariably linked to factors like raising their profile and highlighting tourism resources, but that is another story.