What the Mainland Media Say | What's in a name? Plenty, when it reopens an old wound
A decision to restore the old characters ofa northern city has fuelled rumours about China's changing relations with Russia
Territorial issues are a sensitive issue often likely to fan the flames of nationalism among the Chinese public.
Disputes between China and Japan over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, plus conflict over areas of the South China Sea that are also claimed by nations including the Philippines and Vietnam, easily spark anger among Chinese.
So when a story was aired on primetime TV by the state broadcaster about the renaming of a northeastern city in China and the detailed history of how it was the venue of a treaty that gave away large tracts of land to Russia, some viewers were intrigued.
The programme said that the government in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang had approved the city of Aihui changing the Chinese characters of its name back to their original form before they were changed in 1956. The pronunciation remains the same, but the old characters will be reinstated.
What prompted interest was that the report went into detail about how a treaty in the city in 1858 granted about 600,000 sq km of territory to Russia at expense of the Qing dynasty.
Aihui itself remained in China, but such a very public reminder of a sore point in the nation's history.