Chinese History A-Z

Can you guess these people, places, and things from Chinese history starting with each letter of the alphabet?

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Last updated: February 15, 2026

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First submitted	February 15, 2026
Times taken	8,876
Average score	69.2%
Rating	4.50

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	Hint	Answer
A	Needle-based medical treatment invented around 100 BC	Acupuncture
B	Religion that was suppressed in China in 446, 574, 842, 955, and 1966 but is officially tolerated today	Buddhism
C	In English, Mao is often known as _______ Mao	Chairman
D	Leader of China from 1978–1992 commonly associated with the phrase "to get rich is glorious"	Deng Xiaoping
E	Type of person who often served in the Imperial Court because they could not beget children	Eunuch
F	For over 500 years, nearly all upper class women in China were forced to endure this	Foot binding
G	Formerly known as Canton, it was once the only port open to foreign trade	Guangzhou
H	Imperial dynasty that gives its name to China's majority ethnic group	Han
I	In Taoist mythology, a group of eight people who obtained everlasting life	Eight Immortals
J	Material which was used to make the burial suits of emperors	Jade
K	Mongolian ruler who conquered China, establishing the Yuan dynasty	Kublai Khan
L	10,000 kilometer journey made by Communist troops as they retreated during the Chinese Civil War in the 1930s	The Long March
M	Term for a bureaucrat who earned his place via the imperial examination system	Mandarin
N	City sacked by Japan in 1937	Nanjing
O	According to one estimate, 27% of the male population was addicted to this drug in the year 1900	Opium
P	One of China's main exports in the Middle Ages, Europeans were unable to produce it until 1708	Porcelain
Q	China's last imperial dynasty, 1644–1912	Qing
R	14th century novel that takes place in the 3rd century: "____ of the Three Kingdoms"	Romance
S	Founder of the Republic of China	Sun Yat-sen
T	Spreading from this island after 3000 BC, the Austronesian people settled half the globe from Madagascar to Easter Island	Taiwan
U	Modern name for the Turkic people who first settled in the Tarim Basin of northwest China in the 9th century	Uyghurs
V	From 111 BC–939 AD, China ruled parts of this country	Vietnam
W	Throughout history, China built many of these on its northern border	Walls
X	City near where the first emperor of China was buried, along with his terracotta army	Xi'an
Y	River called "China's Sorrow" because of its many disastrous floods	Yellow River
Z	Admiral whose "Treasure Fleet" brought gifts to India, Arabia, and Africa	Zheng He

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20 Comments

Level 81

Feb 15, 2026

I tried meritocrat. I mean, it does fit…

Level 75

Feb 15, 2026

Regarding answer D, some quotes from Mobo Gao's Constructing China :

"The phrase was popularized by Orville Schell in his 1984 book To Get Rich is Glorious: China in the ’ 80s. But Schell never actually attributed the words to Deng, telling the LA Times’s Evelyn Iritani in 2004 that it merely “grew out of the Zeitgeist” of China’s economic reforms."

"Likewise there are “facts” that are consistently presented in the field of China studies in the West. One is that Deng said “to get rich is glorious,” when actually it is a myth repeated many times without citation or reference by journalists and academics (MacFarquhar 2016, Webster 2015) that it is accepted as fact. The purpose of upholding this myth is twofold: to affirm the neoliberal conceptualization that greed is the motivation and only reason for China’s development, and also to affirm the conceptualization of Orientalism in that the little man Deng was likable but nevertheless vulgar."

Level ∞

Feb 15, 2026

Thanks for the correction. The clue has been amended.

China's history is complicated and we'll do our best to be accurate while still making a quiz that is accessible to a Western audience.

What's not particularly complicated is the terrible poverty and famine under Maoism and the miraculous growth under Deng and his successors once market economics were allowed to thrive. It's amazing to me that people still defend communism, one of the worst ideologies ever created. In my mind, the taboo against communism should be just as strong as that against fascism. Wherever it has been tried it has led to poverty, death, and destruction of the human spirit.

Level 75

Feb 15, 2026

I do commend your correction.

Regarding the rest, I have my qualms. What is China in 1949 ? Essentially, it is an agrarian country, like 1789 France, plus the recent colonisation and civil war.

Communists inherited said dire circumstances, and within 25 years, the country didn't have to worry about famines. China had to suffer through many famines, especially within the first half of the XXth century. Why was the GLF one the last one ? That's decisive. Can any country get rid of poverty and rebuild its irrigation system within 10 years ? No. Within 20-25, actually the Maoists could. So could the Soviets. (I don't have space to delve into the French comparison with the 1846 situation)

Rémy Herrera and Zhiming Long published a book some years ago, "Dynamics of China's Economy", showing very clearly that the rate of capital accumulation under Mao was about 10 %, compared to 11 under Deng : the same. And any comparison with India shows that this initial advantage was crucial.

Level 78

Mar 7, 2026

That's a thin take on Chinese transition. What was China like in the hundred years before the Red Army won and the CCP took over? Was there a worse place in which to live by the 1920s? What role did the West (most directly the British) play in that process? Was the GMD in the process of making that better? And how would you describe the current system? China's success in the last fifty years has much to do with a strong state that is very much a holdover from the Maoist era - one strong enough to have avoided the kinds of economic subservience imposed on others by the Washington Consensus. The differences, post-Deng, are real. The continuities are important as well.

As for the scorching take on Communism at the end, have a wee look at the role of your own government in undermining Communist (however nominal or real) and, for that matter, nationalist experiments throughout the world since World War II. What would Vietnam have been like? Cuba? We'll never know.

Level 78

Mar 7, 2026

A final note: February 2026 is a hell of a time for an American to tell anyone anywhere what to think, or what government to have. I believe they sell mirrors in the U.S.

Level 69

Mar 7, 2026

Ah, yes. A great defense of the beloved CCP government that persecutes and kills religious minorities and harvests organs of political prisoners, followed by a denunciation of Americans in general, because goodness knows they're the worst people on earth and have been undermining the Communist Utopia we should all strive together for.

Level 37

Mar 7, 2026

Persecution of minorities and organ harvesting, while awful, awful things, are unrelated to this debate. I don’t like them either, but they have brought tremendous and unprecedented economic growth to China in the last few decades, and a CCP equivalent without genocide and organ harvesting and horrific surveillance architecture may be possible to achieve, perhaps not in China itself but elsewhere.

Level 69

Mar 7, 2026

Fair point. I dragged it in because tshalla implied that something about Americans disqualified them from commenting on political systems, and I was pointing out that there are some aspects they're just way ahead of the CCP on. As to whether the horrific behavior was necessary for economic growth, it seems to me that Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and Germany among others have come from a similar level of postwar destruction and had even greater success without having to carry out atrocities. But perhaps I'm missing something.

Level 88

Feb 15, 2026

There's something odd about that E clue, but I'm too lazy to try to formulate it clearly.

Level 88

Feb 15, 2026

It should read beget instead of bear. Women bear children. The clue refers to men.

Level ∞

Feb 15, 2026

Changed to beget even though it feels oddly biblical.

Level 88

Feb 15, 2026

Anyone else try Ring?

Level 95

Feb 16, 2026

Where on Earth did the Chinese get hold of all that opium?

Level 92

Feb 17, 2026

Mexican cartels

Level 81

Feb 27, 2026

Not Canada? I'm shocked!

Level 70

Mar 6, 2026

UK imports. The opium was mainly produced in colonies like India and Myanmar

Level 71

Mar 17, 2026

In the 19th century, Britain exported a large amount of opium to China, which caused many Chinese people to become addicted to opium. The Chinese government at the time believed they needed to change this situation, so they sent an official named Lin Zexu to Guangzhou to destroy the opium that had already entered the market and to prohibit the opium trade. This led to British dissatisfaction, so they sent an army to invade China, forcing the Chinese to lift the opium ban, open ports to allow British merchants to trade freely, and cede Hong Kong — this was the Opium War.

Level 88

Mar 7, 2026

TIL that given one minute to make as many guesses as I can, I will not be able to spell "Uyghurs" correctly, nor close enough to be accepted.

Level 24

Apr 15, 2026

Noooooo i wrote "eunich" instead of "eunuch"

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