Changde Taohuayuan Airport — Changde (Dingcheng), China

The name Taohuayuan, meaning Peach Blossom Spring, ties this Hunan province airport to one of Chinese literature's most enduring images, a fable by the poet Tao Yuanming describing a hidden utopia reachable only by chance through a grove of blossoming peach trees said to lie near Changde. The modern airport handles domestic routes connecting the city, which sits along the Yuan River amid a fertile rice-growing plain, to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other major Chinese hubs. Changde also carries a heavy wartime legacy from the 1943 Battle of Changde, one of the most brutal engagements of the Second Sino-Japanese War, fought street by street before Chinese forces recaptured the city. Today the surrounding Dongting Lake basin remains an important agricultural and freshwater-fishing region of central China.