50 Fun Facts About Chinese Culture

Fortune cookies, a fixture of American Chinese restaurants, most likely came from which country's immigrants?

Japan is the likeliest source: a very similar cookie was baked in Kyoto in the 19th century, echoing the paper fortunes drawn at Japanese temples.

Which number do many Chinese buildings skip when numbering floors because it sounds like the word for death?

Four is shunned because sì, the word for the number, sounds almost the same as sǐ, the word for death. Many people also avoid phone numbers and addresses that contain it.

At a Chinese table, why is standing chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice taboo?

It mimics incense for the dead: upright sticks look like the incense burned in a bowl to 'feed' departed relatives, so the gesture reads as an invitation to spirits.

Which colour do mourners traditionally wear at Chinese funerals, where red is strictly forbidden?

White is the traditional colour of mourning in China, the reverse of its bridal meaning in the West. Red is kept away from funerals because it stands for happiness.

In the Great Race legend behind the Chinese zodiac, which animal finished first by riding on the ox?

The Rat won by hitching a lift on the ox and leaping off at the finish line. That is why the Rat opens each twelve-year cycle of the zodiac.

Bird's nest soup, a prized Chinese delicacy, is made from swiftlet nests built almost entirely from what?

Saliva is the building material: swiftlets lay down strands of it that harden into the nest. The nests are among the most expensive animal products people eat.

Which household object is a taboo gift in Chinese culture because giving one sounds like attending a funeral?

A clock is the gift to avoid, above all for an older person: 'song zhong', giving one, sounds the same as the phrase for attending someone's funeral.

The paired stone guardians at Chinese gateways, known in the West as 'foo dogs', actually depict which animal?

Lions are what the statues show: usually a male resting a paw on a ball and his mate holding down a cub. The pairing became popular through Chinese Buddhism.

Unlike Europe's fire-breathing dragons, Chinese dragons are traditionally said to hold power over what?

Rain and rivers are a Chinese dragon's domain: riverside and coastal villages once kept temples to a local dragon king, and officials led rites asking it for rain in a drought.

What do the envelopes known as hongbao, handed to children at Chinese New Year, traditionally contain?

Money goes inside, ideally in crisp new notes and an even amount. The envelope itself is red because the colour is said to bring good luck and ward off evil spirits.

Mooncakes filled with lotus paste and salted egg yolk mark which Chinese holiday of the eighth lunar month?

Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the fifteenth day of that month, when the moon is at its fullest. The salted yolk at the centre of a mooncake stands for that full moon.

Zongzi, the sticky rice parcels of China's Dragon Boat Festival, are traditionally wrapped in which leaves?

Bamboo leaves hold the rice while it steams or boils. In the popular story, villagers threw the parcels to the fish so that they would leave the body of the drowned poet Qu Yuan alone.

According to the legend of the Nian, what were the firecrackers of Chinese New Year first meant to do?

Scare away a monster: the Nian was said to raid villages each New Year until people found it feared loud noise and the colour red. The tale only appears in writing from the early 20th century.

What are the uncut noodles at a Chinese birthday meal, each strand eaten whole, said to bring the diner?

A long life is the wish, which is why tradition forbids the chef to cut the noodles. Peach-shaped longevity buns often share the birthday table.

The Qingming Festival, which Chinese families observe in early April, is known in English by which name?

Tomb-Sweeping Day names the main duty: families visit their ancestors' graves to clean them and make ritual offerings. The holiday reflects the reverence for ancestors in Chinese culture.

Which roast dish, on imperial court menus by the Ming dynasty, is carved at the table and rolled in thin pancakes?

Peking duck is prized for its thin, crisp skin, which the cook slices in front of the diners. The pieces are wrapped with spring onion, cucumber and sweet bean sauce.

Which regional Chinese cuisine filled most Chinese restaurant menus in the West until the late twentieth century?

Cantonese cooking spread worldwide because so many emigrants came from the Guangdong region. It favours steaming and stir-frying, with light seasoning that shows off fresh ingredients.

The Sichuan flavour known as mala pairs the heat of chilli with which other mouth sensation?

Numbness is the 'ma' in mala: a tingle set off by a compound in Sichuan peppercorns, while 'la' is the spicy heat of the chilli.

Dumplings eaten at Chinese New Year are said to bring wealth because their shape resembles what?

Old silver ingots, the sycee once used as currency in imperial China, are what the plump dumplings resemble, so a full plate stands for prosperity in the year ahead.

Which date did Chinese students pick for Singles' Day because its numerals look like lone bare sticks?

11 November was chosen because each numeral 1 resembles a bare stick, Chinese slang for an unmarried man. It began at Nanjing University in 1993 and later became a giant online shopping event.

Which romanisation system, adopted by China in 1958, spells Mandarin sounds with the Latin alphabet?

Pinyin was worked out in the 1950s by a team of linguists. The man remembered as its father, Zhou Youguang, was an economist by profession.

In Mandarin, the syllable 'ma' can mean mother, hemp, horse or scold depending on which feature of speech?

Tone is the difference: Mandarin tells words apart by the rise and fall of pitch within a syllable. Said in a light, neutral pitch, 'ma' is a particle that turns a sentence into a question.

Which Chinese concept holds that opposite but complementary forces, such as dark and light, shape the universe?

Yin and yang are opposites that depend on each other: yin is linked with shade, the moon and the feminine, yang with sunlight and the masculine. The idea underpins Chinese medicine and martial arts.

Feng shui, the Chinese practice used to orient buildings and burial sites, literally means what?

Wind and water is the literal meaning. Before the magnetic compass was invented, practitioners relied on astronomy to line a site up with the heavens.

Which collection of sayings, traditionally compiled by his followers, records the teachings of Confucius?

The Analects began as notes kept by students of their conversations with the Master. Many modern scholars think the book took shape over about two hundred years.

In Confucian ethics, to whom is xiao, the devotion Confucius called the root of virtue, owed above all?

One's parents come first: xiao, usually translated as filial piety, means caring for them while they live and, most important of all, burying and mourning them with the proper rites.

Which element joins wood, fire, earth and water in wuxing, the five-phase scheme of traditional Chinese thought?

Metal completes the set. The phases feed one another in a cycle, so earth is said to bear metal, and each is tied to its own colour and season.

Which Chinese term names the vital energy that acupuncture is said to balance along the body's meridians?

Qi literally means vapour, air or breath. Believers hold that good health depends on its unimpeded flow, which needles, exercise and herbs are all meant to restore.

In Chinese society and business dealings, what does the much-discussed term guanxi refer to?

A network of personal ties is the idea: guanxi requires a personal bond before any deal can develop, built over shared dinners and banquets, never in formal meetings alone.

Which item joins the brush, ink stick and paper among the treasures of a traditional Chinese scholar's study?

The inkstone is a stone mortar: the calligrapher rubs a solid ink stick across its moistened surface to grind fresh liquid ink. Stones from certain quarries are prized by collectors.

Which name belongs to the Monkey King, the staff-wielding trickster hero of the novel Journey to the West?

Sun Wukong, born from a stone, can cover 108,000 li in a single somersault and wields a staff that grows or shrinks on command.

Which classic Chinese novel follows 108 outlaws who gather at Mount Liang to rebel against the government?

Water Margin is a Ming-dynasty novel that looks back to the Northern Song of the twelfth century. English editions also call it Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers.

Which Tang poet, nicknamed the Immortal of Poetry, drowned in legend while reaching for the moon's reflection?

Li Bai was famous for verses in praise of wine, and the well-known tale has him toppling drunk from his boat as he tried to embrace the moon in the river.

The legend of Hua Mulan, who took her father's place in the army disguised as a man, first survives in what form?

A folk ballad is the earliest record: the Ballad of Mulan is believed to date from the Northern Wei era, some 1,500 years ago. It survives because a Song-dynasty anthology copied it.

In the legend behind China's Qixi Festival, which birds form a bridge so the Cowherd and Weaver Girl can meet?

Magpies span the Silver River, the Milky Way, once a year on the seventh night of the seventh lunar month. The date is often described as the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day.

Which goddess, said in Chinese myth to live on the moon, gave her name to China's lunar exploration programme?

Chang'e flew up to the moon after drinking an elixir of immortality awarded to her husband, the archer Hou Yi. A rabbit is said to keep her company there, preparing more of the potion.

Which bodhisattva of compassion, often called China's Goddess of Mercy, was at first depicted as a male figure?

Guanyin is the Chinese name of Avalokiteśvara, a bodhisattva first described as male. In China the figure took an all-female form around the 12th century, as a patron of mothers and seamen.

Which two-stringed bowed instrument, sometimes called the Chinese violin, has a soundbox covered in python skin?

The erhu is played with a horsehair bow that is never separated from the instrument: it passes between the two strings instead of over them, as a Western bow would.

Mei Lanfang, the Beijing opera star who toured North America in 1930, made his name playing which kind of role?

Female leads, known as dan, were his speciality, and his poised portrayals of women won him international acclaim. In Hollywood he was welcomed by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

In the legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, China's Romeo and Juliet, what do the lovers' spirits become?

Butterflies rise from the grave when it bursts open with a clap of thunder, and the pair fly away together. The tale is known in English as the Butterfly Lovers.

Which animal is a lucky motif in Chinese painting because its name sounds like the word for good fortune?

The bat owes its luck to a pun: fú, the word for the animal, sounds exactly like fú, good fortune. The same lucky word is the character hung on doors at New Year, often upside down.

Which southern Chinese martial art did grandmaster Ip Man bring to Hong Kong and teach to a young Bruce Lee?

Wing Chun spread around the world from Ip Man's Hong Kong classes, and Bruce Lee became his most famous student. The teacher died only seven months before his pupil.

Which custom, banned by the new Chinese republic in 1912, aimed to produce the 'three-inch golden lotus'?

Foot binding may have begun among court dancers in the tenth century and spread from the elite to poorer families. The 1912 ban was not actively enforced at first.

Which hairstyle did the Manchu rulers of Qing China force on Han men, on pain of execution for treason?

The queue paired a shaved forehead with a long braid, and it was the shaving that Han men resisted most fiercely. The rule ended when the Qing dynasty fell in 1912.

Which stone, prized above gold in ancient China, was sewn into burial suits to preserve the bodies of Han royalty?

Jade was believed to prevent decay and protect the soul, so Han royals and great lords were buried entirely sheathed in suits of it stitched together with gold thread.

According to legend, the Chinese empress Leizu discovered silk when what fell into her cup of tea?

A cocoon dropped into the hot drink and unravelled into a thread that, in one account, stretched across her whole garden. Tradition also credits her with inventing the silk loom.

In Chinese legend, which mythical emperor discovered tea when leaves drifted into his bowl of boiled water?

Shennong, the 'Divine Farmer', is also said to have tasted hundreds of plants to learn which ones healed, swallowing seventy poisons in a day. Tea, the story goes, was his antidote.

Which traditional Chinese therapy involves burning dried mugwort on or near particular points on the body?

Moxibustion uses mugwort that has been aged and ground to a fluff, then burned loose or rolled into a cigar-shaped stick. Practitioners often pair it with acupuncture needles.

Which traditional house style, a cultural symbol of old Beijing, encloses a courtyard with buildings on every side?

The siheyuan was once common right across northern China, in rural Shanxi as well as the capital. English writers also call it a courtyard house or a Chinese quadrangle.

Which ancient Chinese ball game, played without using the hands, does FIFA cite among the earliest kicking games?

Cuju is described in a military manual from the Han dynasty. Players kicked a feather-stuffed ball through an opening without letting it touch the ground.