40 Fun Facts About Provinces of China

Which blockbuster film had a sandstone pillar in China's Zhangjiajie forest park renamed after it in 2010?

Avatar is honoured in the official name 'Avatar Hallelujah Mountain', given to the 1,080-metre Southern Sky Column. The film's designers drew on Chinese karst peaks for its floating mountains.

Which Chinese province, famed for mouth-numbing peppercorn cooking, is home to most wild giant pandas?

Sichuan's panda sanctuaries are home to more than 30 percent of the world's giant pandas, and its capital Chengdu has a research base for breeding them.

Which city, a Portuguese colony until 1999, overtook Las Vegas to become the world's biggest gambling hub?

Macau, one of China's two special administrative regions, out-earned the Las Vegas Strip within a decade of its handover and is the most densely populated region in the world.

Which Chinese province is home to the Terracotta Army, found in 1974 by farmers digging a well near Xi'an?

Shaanxi and its eastern neighbour Shanxi differ only in tone in Mandarin, which is why the two names look so alike in English.

Which Chinese city, founded around a Russian-built railway, hosts the world's largest ice and snow festival?

Harbin is known as the Ice City for its bitterly cold winters, and it first prospered as a settlement of immigrants from the Russian Empire.

Which Chinese province, split from Guangdong in 1988, is a tropical island in the South China Sea?

Hainan is the southernmost province of China, and it was made a Special Economic Zone in the same year it gained provincial status to draw in investment.

Which conqueror has a mausoleum in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, although his real tomb has never been found?

Genghis Khan's mausoleum in Ordos is really a cenotaph: the coffin in its main hall holds headdresses and accessories but no body.

Which Chinese province was the birthplace of Confucius and is home to Mount Tai, a sacred Taoist peak?

Shandong is where Confucius was born, in the city of Qufu, and its port of Qingdao is the home of Tsingtao Beer.

Which city, where the Potala Palace was the winter home of the Dalai Lamas, is the capital of Tibet?

Lhasa means 'place of gods', and it has been the religious and administrative capital of Tibet since the mid-17th century.

Which vast region covers about a sixth of China and borders eight countries, from Russia to India?

Xinjiang is the largest province-level division of China, spanning over 1.6 million square kilometres, and its name can be translated as 'new frontier'.

Which Chinese province was the birthplace of Mao Zedong, born to a peasant family in the village of Shaoshan?

Hunan literally means 'south of the lake', a reference to Dongting Lake in its north-east. Mao went on to study in its capital, Changsha.

Which province almost entirely surrounds Beijing and was once known as Zhili, meaning 'directly ruled'?

Hebei means 'north of the river', and the land around Beijing was first called Zhili after the Yongle Emperor moved his capital there in 1421.

Which province-level division, China's northernmost, is named after the river that forms its border with Russia?

Heilongjiang is the Mandarin name of the Amur and means 'black dragon river'. The province also contains China's easternmost point, where the Amur meets the Ussuri.

Which south-western province of China borders three countries: Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam?

Yunnan is one of the most ethnically diverse provinces of China, with minorities such as the Yi, Bai and Dai making up about a third of its people.

Which coastal province is the closest part of mainland China to Taiwan, facing the island across a strait?

Fujian is also home to the tulou, fortified earthen buildings that can house up to 800 people each.

Which Chinese province on the Tibetan Plateau shares its name with the country's largest lake?

Qinghai is named after Qinghai Lake, and both the Yangtze and the Mekong have their sources in the south-west of the province.

Which region on China's border with Vietnam is home to the Zhuang, the country's largest ethnic minority?

Guangxi carries the Zhuang in its full official name, and its city of Guilin has long been renowned for its scenery of limestone karst peaks.

Which Chinese province is home to the Shaolin Temple, the monastery recognised as the cradle of kung fu?

Henan's Shaolin Temple stands at the foot of the Mount Song range and is also recognised as the birthplace of Chan Buddhism.

The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest power station, spans the Yangtze near Yichang in which province?

Hubei means 'north of the lake', after Dongting Lake, and planners expected the dam's reservoir to flood 13 cities and 140 towns in whole or in part.

Which southern Chinese city, long known in the West as Canton, hosts China's oldest and largest trade fair?

Guangzhou is the capital and largest city of Guangdong, the province with the largest population in China, and its twice-yearly trade fair still carries the Canton name.

Which Chinese city, split from its province in 1997, is a municipality about the size of Austria?

Chongqing was made a municipality to speed development in central and western China, and by population it is the largest city proper in the world.

Which Chinese city, home to the Bund waterfront, has the world's busiest container port?

Shanghai is written with the characters for 'upon' and 'sea', and it is run as a municipality with the same rank as a province.

Which port city, long the gateway to Beijing, is one of four Chinese municipalities ranked equal to a province?

Tianjin has been the capital's seaport and gateway since it became a treaty port in 1860, and like every municipality it answers directly to the central government.

Which capital of Jiangsu province holds the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen and was a capital of China until 1949?

Nanjing literally means 'Southern Capital', a name the first Ming emperor made official in 1368 to set it apart from a 'Northern Capital'.

Which capital of Zhejiang province, famed for its West Lake, sits at the southern end of the Grand Canal?

Hangzhou was the capital of the Southern Song dynasty until the Mongol conquest of 1276, and it now hosts the headquarters of the Alibaba Group.

Which city on the Yangtze was the site of the 1911 uprising that ended 2,000 years of dynastic rule in China?

Wuhan grew out of three towns, Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang, and it was the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 that brought down the Qing dynasty.

Which Jiangsu city of canals and classical gardens is often called the 'Venice of the East'?

Suzhou's classical gardens are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Marco Polo's Travels credits the city with 6,000 stone bridges.

Which Chinese regional capital holds a Guinness record as the most remote city from any sea in the world?

Urumqi lies about 2,500 kilometres from the nearest coastline, and it once collected taxes from caravans travelling the northern route of the Silk Road.

Which capital of Gansu province is famous across China for beef noodles, sold in over 1,000 of its restaurants?

Lanzhou was a major link on the ancient Northern Silk Road, and it is still a rail hub connecting China's far west to the eastern half of the country.

Which peak on the border between Tibet and Nepal is known in Tibetan as Qomolangma?

Mount Everest stands 8,848.86 metres high by a joint Nepalese and Chinese survey of 2020, and most climbers on the Tibetan side drive straight to its North Base Camp.

Which landmark's Ming-era section has its western end at Jiayu Pass, a frontier fortress in Gansu province?

The Great Wall's gate at Jiayu Pass was where most merchants and envoys from Central and West Asia entered China in the Ming period.

Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province has been known for at least 1,000 years as the Chinese capital of which craft?

Porcelain from Jingdezhen was for centuries the finest in China, and the town took its present name in 1004 from the reign title of the emperor under whom its wares rose to fame.

Shanxi province holds roughly one third of China's reserves of which resource, long the base of its industry?

Coal has long shaped Shanxi's industry, and the province's name means 'west of the mountains', a nod to the Taihang range on its eastern edge.

Which country lies across the Yalu River from Dandong in Liaoning province, linked to it by a Friendship Bridge?

North Korea's city of Sinuiju sits at the far end of the bridge, which carries a railway and a road but is closed to pedestrians.

Which historical name is given to the three provinces of north-east China, among them Liaoning and Jilin?

Manchuria is the ancestral homeland of the Manchus, founders of the Qing dynasty, and in China the area is now simply called the Northeast.

Which romanisation system, introduced by China in 1958, replaced older spellings such as Kwangtung with Guangdong?

Pinyin is the official romanisation system of China, Singapore and the United Nations, and it is also the reason Peking is now written Beijing.

Which kind of province-level division, such as Tibet, does China reserve for areas with a large ethnic minority?

Autonomous region is the highest level of minority self-rule in China: each has its own local government and, on paper, more legislative rights than a province.

Counting Taiwan, which it claims but does not run, how many province-level divisions does China list?

34 is the official count, yet only 33 are actually administered from Beijing: Taiwan is listed as a 23rd province even though the mainland does not control it.

Which official, not the governor, is the de facto most important figure in every Chinese province?

Party secretary is the real top job: the holder leads the provincial branch of the Chinese Communist Party, which sits in parallel to the governor's People's Government.

Which principle, developed by Deng Xiaoping, lets Hong Kong keep a capitalist economy and its own currency?

One country, two systems was devised by Deng with Taiwan in mind as well, and Hong Kong's Basic Law guarantees the arrangement for 50 years.