In the face of China's current trend of place name alterations designed to bolster reputations and improve tourism, the national government is considering a new national database and new rules on how place names can be changed.

"With the rapid pace of urbanization, new towns are sprouting up and old cities are renaming themselves at a speed never seen in the country's history," Luo Pingfei, vice-minister of civil affairs, said on Wednesday.

According to Luo, the ministry has been approving an annual average of 20,000 new place names in recent years. The most noticeable was former Zhongdian County in South China's Yunnan Province, which was labeled "Shangri-La County" after the fictional place in James Hilton's well-known novel "Lost Horizon."

The renaming in 2002 brought an instant tourist income of 600 million yuan (US$72.6 million) the same year to the Himalayan town of 130,000 residents, little heard of by people in China, let alone outside the country. It claimed to be the place where British writer James Hilton visited and set his world famous novel.

Another success story cherished by nomenclaturist government officials who propose fancy appellations to their territory is Dayong in south China's Hunan Province, which was named Zhangjiajie in 1994 after a nearby UNESCO world natural heritage site.

Before the name switch, there was even not a proper paved road in the city. But today, it sports a new airport, a railway line, and an under-construction highway linking to the provincial capital, Changsha.

Not all alterations were applauded. Huizhou in east China's Anhui Province was named Huangshan after the Huangshan Mountains in 1987. The change brought more investment, tourists and economic benefits to areas surrounding the world natural heritage site know for its unique pines, stones, seas of cloud and spring water. But more than 900 national legislators and top advisors have in the past decades initiated motions and bills to change the name back the one that has existed for 900 years.

The intellectual community charged that the disappearance of Huizhou, which was home to the Peking Opera, an important branch of Chinese merchants and distinctive style of architecture, is a great loss to Chinese culture and tradition.

Place names changes cost in other ways as well.

An ongoing change of two district names in Tianshui in northwest China's Gansu Province is expected to inflict more than two million yuan (US$247,000) in "direct economic cost" to the city where annual average income stands at 5,819 yuan (US$700) for urban dwellers, according to a modest estimate by Cao Huaiyi, an official with the local civil affairs bureau. The change of several words would require new nameplates for all the government offices, state-owned and private businesses and schools, as well as their stationery people's ID cards and driving licenses. Others claimed the total costs could amount to 10 times Cao's estimate.

Unlike the current economically motivated drive of place name changes, the previous large scale one was in the 1930s, whose primary purpose was to eradicate discrimination against ethnic minorities, critics say.

But the change of a single name in the country also affects millions of atlases, railway charts and publications relating to place names, and poses inconveniences for postal services and other communications.

Vice-minister Luo Pingfei said his ministry will spend five years compiling a four-layer database at national, provincial, municipal and county levels covering all the place names, administrative districts, neighborhood sites, major buildings, roads, rivers, lakes, mountains, tourist sites. Pronunciation, aliases, and origins of names will also be included.

Building on the database, the country will produce e-maps and many other digital services, Luo said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2005)