97 Fun Facts About Chinese History

Which dynasty is traditionally considered the first historically verified dynasty of China?

While the Xia dynasty appears in traditional histories, the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) is the earliest dynasty confirmed by archaeological evidence, including oracle bone inscriptions discovered at Yinxu.

What material were the earliest Chinese oracle bones primarily made from?

Turtle shells and ox scapulae were heated until they cracked, and diviners read the cracks; villagers later ground the bones up as 'dragon bones' for medicine.

Who was the first Emperor of a unified China?

Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE) conquered all rival states and unified China in 221 BCE, establishing the Qin dynasty. He standardized weights, measures, currency, and writing across the empire.

What massive construction project did China's first emperor initiate to protect the northern border?

The Great Wall: after General Meng Tian drove the Xiongnu from the Ordos around 215 BCE, the emperor linked older state walls into one northern barrier.

Confucius lived during which era of Chinese history?

The Spring and Autumn period saw Confucius (551–479 BCE) leave the state of Lu and wander among other states for years, seeking a better ruler to serve.

Which ancient Chinese philosophy traces its origins to Lao Tzu?

Taoism: legend says the border official Yinxi asked Lao Tzu to write down his wisdom before letting him pass, and the result is traditionally the Tao Te Ching.

Which Chinese dynasty established the Silk Road as a major trade route connecting East and West?

The Han dynasty established the Silk Road through the diplomatic missions of Zhang Qian around 130 BCE. Emperor Wu sent Zhang Qian westward to forge alliances, opening trade routes that would connect China to Rome.

Which writing material did the Chinese refine into a cheap, practical form around 105 CE?

Paper: court official Cai Lun made it from tree bark, hemp waste, old rags and fishnets; cruder paper existed earlier, but his replaced bulky bamboo slips.

Sun Tzu's famous military treatise is known by what English title?

The Art of War: legend says Sun Tzu proved his methods by drilling the king of Wu's concubines and executing two royal favourites who laughed at his orders.

The Three Kingdoms period of China featured which three rival states?

Wei, Shu, and Wu all lost in the end: the Sima clan seized Wei, founded the Jin, and conquered Wu in 280 to reunify China.

Which legendary Chinese military strategist is associated with the phrase "Empty Fort Strategy"?

Zhuge Liang, in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, bluffs Sima Yi into retreating by opening the gates and calmly playing his guqin on the wall; the episode is fictional.

Which short-lived dynasty reunified China after centuries of division and built the Grand Canal?

The Sui, founded in 581, reunified China by conquering the southern Chen in 589; Emperor Yang's Grand Canal linked the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, and its cost helped sink the dynasty by 618.

What was the capital of the Tang dynasty, often considered China's golden age?

Chang'an, today's Xi'an, held up to a million people, and Japan modelled its capital Heian-kyō, now Kyoto, on its grid plan.

Who was the only woman in Chinese history to officially rule as emperor in her own right?

Wu Zetian rose from concubine to become the only woman to assume the title of Empress Regnant in Chinese history, establishing her own brief Zhou dynasty (690–705 CE) during the Tang era.

Which printing technique, developed under the Tang dynasty, produced the Diamond Sutra of 868 CE?

Woodblock printing: each page was carved in reverse on a single block, and the Diamond Sutra of 868, found in a Dunhuang cave, is the oldest dated printed book.

Gunpowder was originally developed by Chinese alchemists seeking what?

An elixir of immortality was the goal, and a 9th-century text warned that heating sulfur, saltpeter and honey had burnt alchemists' faces and even whole houses.

Which navigation device did Song dynasty sailors adopt long before Europe?

The magnetic compass: a Song writer recorded that in dark weather sailors looked at the south-pointing needle, and Europe's first recorded use came around 1190.

Who invented movable type printing in China around 1040 CE, roughly 400 years before Gutenberg?

Bi Sheng was a commoner, not a scholar, and we know of his baked-clay type only because the polymath Shen Kuo described it in his Dream Pool Essays.

China's Song dynasty is known for introducing the world's first government-issued what?

Banknotes: jiaozi began as merchants' notes in Sichuan, where heavy iron coins made trade a burden, before the Song state took over their issue in 1024.

Which Mongol leader conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty?

Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson, finished off the Song in 1279, yet both his invasions of Japan failed, a typhoon wrecking his 1281 fleet.

Which former peasant and novice monk drove out the Mongols and reigned as the Hongwu Emperor?

Zhu Yuanzhang lost his parents to plague in 1344, begged as a novice monk, joined the Red Turban rebels, and drove the Mongols from Dadu in 1368.

The Forbidden City in Beijing was built during which dynasty?

The Ming dynasty finished it in 1420 with over a million workers, and it housed 24 emperors until the last, Puyi, was expelled in 1924.

Which vast Chinese reference work, completed in 1408, filled 11,095 volumes?

The Yongle Encyclopedia survives only in fragments, and heaps of its volumes burned when the Hanlin Academy caught fire in Beijing in 1900.

Which animal, brought to China during admiral Zheng He's voyages, was hailed at court as the mythical qilin?

A giraffe from Malindi, in modern Kenya, was taken for a qilin, an auspicious beast whose arrival was read as a good omen for the emperor.

Which Venetian merchant claimed to have spent 17 years in China serving its Mongol emperor?

Marco Polo dictated his tales while a prisoner of war in Genoa, and his cellmate, the romance writer Rustichello da Pisa, wrote them down.

Which ancient Chinese philosophy did Li Si, chancellor to China's first emperor, champion?

Legalism guided Li Si, who in 213 BCE had the books of rival schools and the histories of other states burned.

What was the name of the massive mid-19th-century civil war that nearly toppled the Qing dynasty?

The Taiping Rebellion killed an estimated 20 to 30 million people, and the Qing crushed it with help from a Western-officered force, the Ever-Victorious Army.

Which Qing dynasty emperor had the longest reign in Chinese history, ruling for 61 years?

The Kangxi Emperor ruled from 1661 to 1722, and his grandson Qianlong later gave up the throne after 60 years rather than outreign him, while keeping real power.

The First Opium War (1839–1842) was fought between China and which country?

Great Britain went to war after Commissioner Lin Zexu seized British merchants' opium at Canton in 1839 and had it destroyed at Humen.

Which 1842 agreement ended the First Opium War and opened five Chinese ports to trade?

The Treaty of Nanking was signed aboard a warship off Nanjing, and one of the five ports it opened was Shanghai.

The Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 was an uprising against what?

Foreign powers and Christian missions were the Boxers' targets, under the slogan 'Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners', and they besieged Beijing's legations for 55 days.

Who is China's 'Father of the Nation' for overthrowing the Qing and founding the Republic?

Sun Yat-sen is honoured on both sides of the strait: the Republic of China calls him Father of the Nation, and Beijing the Forerunner of the Revolution.

Which 1911 uprising, begun at Wuchang, ended over 2,000 years of imperial rule in China?

The Xinhai Revolution ended with the child emperor's abdication in February 1912, yet he kept his title and went on living in the Forbidden City.

Which empress dowager, shortly before her death in 1908, chose two-year-old Puyi as China's emperor?

Empress Dowager Cixi died a day after his uncle, the Guangxu Emperor, whom forensic tests later showed had been poisoned with arsenic.

The Long March of 1934–1935 was a military retreat by which group?

Chinese Communist forces: about 86,000 Red Army troops broke out of the Jiangxi Soviet in October 1934 and marched for a year to northern Shaanxi; fewer than 10,000 arrived, and the ordeal cemented Mao Zedong's leadership.

From which Beijing gate did Mao Zedong proclaim the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949?

Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, is the entrance to the old imperial city, and October 1 is celebrated each year as China's National Day.

After losing the Chinese Civil War, where did Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government retreat to?

Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek and the Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan in 1949. The ROC government continued to claim sovereignty over all of China from Taipei for decades.

In Mao's Great Leap Forward, what were peasants told to produce in backyard furnaces?

Steel was the target: peasants melted down pots, pans and tools in backyard furnaces, but much of the output was useless, and the farm labour it took helped bring on famine.

The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was spearheaded by which militant group mobilized by Mao?

The Red Guards were militant students mobilized by Mao in 1966 to purge capitalist and traditional elements; they persecuted intellectuals and destroyed cultural artifacts before being abolished in 1968.

At which sport's 1971 world championships did a chance encounter between US and Chinese players begin a diplomatic thaw?

Table tennis: American Glenn Cowan missed his bus in Nagoya, rode with the Chinese team, and within days his team was invited to Beijing, paving the way for Nixon's visit.

Which leader initiated China's "Reform and Opening Up" economic policies beginning in 1978?

Deng Xiaoping, the reforms' 'General Architect', had Reform and Opening Up adopted at the Third Plenum of December 1978, admitting markets while keeping party control.

The 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing were primarily led by which group?

University students led them, first gathering to mourn the reformer Hu Yaobang; by May 17 about a million people filled the square, before troops cleared it on June 4.

Two years after Hong Kong's 1997 handover, which other European-run territory returned to Chinese rule?

Macau went back on 20 December 1999, ending 442 years of Portuguese rule that began as a trading post in 1557.

Which ancient Chinese divination text is one of the Five Classics of Confucianism?

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, builds its divinations from 64 hexagrams, and in 1703 Leibniz hailed them as a Chinese forerunner of his binary numbers.

Which failed exam candidate, claiming to be Jesus's brother, rebelled against the Qing?

Hong Xiuquan read a pamphlet of Bible passages after his fourth exam failure and took his earlier sickbed visions as proof he was God's son.

What was the "Mandate of Heaven" concept used to justify in ancient Chinese political philosophy?

The right of a dynasty to rule came from Heaven but could be withdrawn, so floods, famines and revolts were read as signs a ruler had lost it.

Which Luoyang site, founded in 68 AD, is traditionally China's first Buddhist temple?

White Horse Temple: legend says an emperor dreamed of a golden figure, sent envoys west, and they returned with two Indian monks and scriptures carried on white horses.

Which bird did Mao's Four Pests campaign of 1958 try to wipe out across China for eating grain?

Sparrows also ate huge numbers of insects, so killing them upset the balance of nature and helped bring on famine. In 1960 bed bugs replaced them on the list.

What did a bronze device shown to China's court in 132 AD detect by dropping a ball into a toad's mouth?

Earthquakes as far as 500 km away set it off, and the urn built by the astronomer Zhang Heng showed which direction the tremor came from. The court read such shocks as a sign of Heaven's displeasure.

Which legendary Chinese warrior disguised herself as a man to take her aged father's place in the army?

Hua Mulan serves twelve years in the Ballad of Mulan, a folk song from around the fifth century, before her astonished comrades learn she is a woman.

Which stone, valued above gold in ancient China, was made into burial suits for royal tombs?

Jade plaques were sewn together with gold thread to encase dead royals from head to toe, in the belief that the stone would preserve the body and the soul.

Which waterway, the cradle of Chinese civilisation, is nicknamed China's Sorrow for its deadly floods?

The Yellow River has flooded about 1,600 times in 2,500 years of records and has shifted its whole course again and again, once moving its mouth to the far side of the Shandong peninsula.

Which US president's week-long visit to Beijing in 1972 ended more than two decades of diplomatic silence?

Richard Nixon called it the week that changed the world. No American president had ever visited the People's Republic before him.

Which creature, when shown with five claws, was reserved for the use of China's emperor alone?

The dragon with five claws belonged to the emperor alone once the rule was codified under Mongol rule, while princes and nobles had to make do with four.

Outside which modern Chinese city were more than 8,000 terracotta soldiers found guarding an emperor's tomb?

Xi'an has dry air that is hard on the figures: once they are exposed, the lacquer under their paint can curl in fifteen seconds and flake off within four minutes.

Which practice, said to have begun among tenth-century court dancers, did China's new republic ban in 1912?

Foot binding spread from the Song elite to lower social classes by the Qing era, and the 1912 ban was not actively enforced.

What is the usual English translation of Zhongguo, the name Chinese speakers use for their own country?

Middle Kingdom at first meant only the heartland on China's northern plains, as distinct from the tribal lands around it. The phrase came into common use more than 2,200 years ago.

Which drink did the Tang writer Lu Yu celebrate around 760 in the first known book devoted to it?

Tea found its first champion in Lu Yu, an orphan raised by a monk who, by legend, ran away and joined a circus as a clown before turning scholar.

For which product is the city of Jingdezhen, an imperial supplier for 1,000 years, famous worldwide?

Porcelain from Jingdezhen was long the finest in China, and its kilns were the first to perfect the mix of kaolin and petuntse that makes true hard-paste ware.

Which Tibetan spiritual leader escaped to India in 1959 as an uprising in Lhasa was being crushed?

The Dalai Lama fled after two artillery rounds landed near his residence. On reaching the Indian border he declared Tibet's independence restored.

Which war did China enter in October 1950 by sending so-called volunteers to fight US-led forces?

The Korean War was fought by regular Chinese army units renamed a volunteer army, a label meant to avoid a declared war with the US and other UN members.

Which Chinese population rule, added to the constitution in 1982, was relaxed for all couples in 2015?

The one-child policy never covered everyone: from the mid-1980s rural parents could have a second child if their first was a daughter.

Which Chinese city's riverfront Bund once housed foreign banks and trading houses from nine countries?

Shanghai packed so much finance onto the Bund that by the 1940s the strip held the head offices of most major financial institutions operating in China.

Which people from China's northeastern frontier, descendants of the Jurchens, founded the Qing dynasty?

The Manchus took that name only in 1635, when their ruler adopted it to replace Jurchen, the year before he proclaimed the Qing.

Which system for writing Mandarin in the Latin alphabet did China's national congress adopt in 1958?

Pinyin was devised by a team under an economist, later called its father, who died in 2017 aged 111. It replaced the Wade–Giles spellings of the nineteenth century.

By what name are the Homo erectus fossils dug from a cave at Zhoukoudian in the 1920s and 1930s known?

Peking Man is studied mostly from plaster casts, because the original fossils vanished in December 1941 on their way to a ship bound for America. The first find, in 1921, was a single tooth.

Which American volunteer air unit, led by Claire Chennault, fought for China against Japan in 1941 and 1942?

The Flying Tigers painted shark faces on their fighters, an idea copied from a photograph of an RAF squadron in North Africa. They first saw combat 12 days after Pearl Harbor.

Which class of court servants, among them the admiral Zheng He, at times held more power than ministers?

Eunuchs could rise to immense power, yet for centuries castration was also one of the traditional Five Punishments as well as a way into a job at court.

Which method of choosing China's officials by merit, not birth, lasted about 1,300 years until 1905?

Written examinations were first used in earnest to recruit officials around 600 AD, and the classical learning they demanded gave a far-flung empire one common culture.

Which American policy, set out by John Hay in 1899, demanded equal trading rights in China for all powers?

The Open Door notes went to six rival powers and were meant to stop China being carved up like a melon, as Africa had been.

Which city on the border with Hong Kong became China's first special economic zone in the early 1980s?

Shenzhen was chosen for its closeness to Hong Kong, and the zone drew in foreign investment along with migrants from across China looking for opportunity.

Which collection of sayings is traditionally said to have been compiled by followers of Confucius?

The Analects probably took around two centuries to reach its final form, many modern scholars believe, and some doubt that every saying in it is authentic.

Which hairstyle did Qing rulers order conquered Chinese men to adopt within ten days or face execution?

The queue began as the hairstyle of the conquerors' own menfolk: the front of the head shaved bare and the rest worn in one long braid down the back.

Which royal dynasty held China's throne for some 790 years, a longer span than any other?

The Zhou era, which ended in 256 BC, is seen as the high point of Chinese bronze casting, and in its later centuries the great schools of Chinese philosophy first took shape.

Which era of Chinese history ended when the westernmost of seven rival powers finished conquering the other six?

The Warring States era began with seven big powers and ended in 221 BC, when the westernmost had swallowed the other six, one after another, in under ten years.

Which legendary ruler, credited with taming China's floods, is said to have founded the Xia dynasty?

Yu the Great is said to have spent thirteen years dredging silted riverbeds beside his labourers, passing his own doorstep three times without once going in.

Which historian chose castration over execution in 99 BC in order to finish writing a history of China?

Sima Qian was punished for defending a general blamed for a lost campaign, and endured the disgrace to complete his Records of the Grand Historian, the model for later official histories.

Which warlord and poet who dominated northern China around 200 AD stands in for the devil in a Chinese saying?

Cao Cao arrives the moment he is spoken of, runs the saying, China's counterpart to speaking of the devil. The real man is also celebrated for his poems.

Which Tang poet, a famous drinker, is said to have drowned reaching for the moon's reflection from a boat?

Li Bai wrote some of his best-loved poems about wine and moonlight, which is why the well-known tale of his drunken death has stuck, true or not.

Which general's revolt, launched in 755, drove the Tang emperor from the capital and lasted eight years?

An Lushan seized the eastern capital and proclaimed himself emperor of a new dynasty in 756, but within a year he was murdered with the backing of his own son.

Which consort, one of China's Four Beauties, was put to death when a Tang emperor's escort mutinied?

Yang Guifei was blamed by the mutineers, along with her cousin the chief minister, for the dynasty's decline. She was buried without a coffin, wrapped in purple blankets.

Which Tang-era monk's seventeen-year overland journey to India later inspired the novel Journey to the West?

Xuanzang carried home at least 657 Indian texts and translated some of them himself. The novel that made him a household name came some nine centuries later.

Which city, then called Lin'an, served as the Southern Song capital until the Mongol invasion of 1276?

Hangzhou became the capital after Jurchen armies overran the north, and refugees helped swell it to well over a million people, by one historian's estimate.

Which Song general, a byword for loyalty, was framed and put to death in 1142 after a peace deal?

Yue Fei is said to have had four characters pledging utmost loyalty to the country tattooed across his back. Iron statues of his accusers were later made to kneel before his tomb.

Which Italian Jesuit became the first European invited into Beijing's Forbidden City, in 1601?

Matteo Ricci was invited by an emperor who wanted his skills in court astronomy and calendar science. A year later he produced a world map in Chinese characters.

Which Qing emperor gave up the throne in 1796, after sixty years, to avoid outreigning a revered grandfather?

Qianlong stepped down in name only: he kept the real power until his death three years later, and ranks among history's longest-lived monarchs.

Which court ritual became the sticking point of Lord Macartney's embassy to China's emperor in 1793?

The kowtow meant kneeling on both knees and touching the forehead to the ground. Macartney would go down on one knee only, as before his own king, and every request he brought was rejected.

Which Qing official had seized foreign opium mixed with lime and salt and thrown into the sea in 1839?

Lin Zexu put 500 workers to the task for 23 days, then composed an elegy apologising to the gods of the sea for polluting their realm.

Which vast imperial garden complex outside Beijing did European troops loot and burn to the ground in 1860?

The Old Summer Palace was so large that it took 4,000 men three days to destroy it, and treasures looted from its halls ended up in dozens of museums around the world.

To which single southern port did Qing China confine almost all trade with the West from 1757 to 1842?

Canton's foreign merchants had to deal through the Cohong, a licensed guild of Chinese traders, and worked from the Thirteen Factories on the riverbank outside the city.

Which president of China's young republic declared himself emperor in 1915, only to abdicate 83 days later?

Yuan Shikai's grab for the throne provoked an armed revolt in the provinces, and in March 1916 he restored the republic in the face of widespread opposition.

Which 1919 wave of protest began in Beijing after the Versailles settlement left Shandong in Japanese hands?

The May Fourth Movement grew out of a sense of betrayal: China had sent 140,000 labourers to the Western Front, yet Germany's former holdings went to Japan.

Which remote Shaanxi town was Mao Zedong's revolutionary base from the mid-1930s until early 1947?

Yan'an was taken over in December 1936 and is celebrated in China as the birthplace of the revolution. A nearby county seat had served as headquarters first.

Which southwestern city served as China's provisional wartime capital from late 1937 until 1946?

Chongqing endured massive bombing raids from 1938 to 1943, and its weather possibly helped protect it from being overrun on the ground.

Which 1956–57 drive invited China's citizens to criticise the ruling party, then turned on those who did?

The Hundred Flowers Campaign loosened controls on ideas and culture, but as the complaints mounted the party saw a threat and launched a purge of so-called rightists.

Which neighbour and former ally did Chinese troops fight in 1969 over an island in the Ussuri River?

The Soviet Union and China fought an undeclared conflict for seven months, and a later clash in Xinjiang raised the prospect of a nuclear exchange.

Which radical faction led by Mao's wife Jiang Qing was arrested in October 1976, weeks after Mao died?

The Gang of Four were later tried in sessions broadcast daily on television. Two of them were sentenced to death, though both sentences were commuted to life in prison.