Asia Trivia
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124 free Asia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
54 free Asia trivia questions with answers. Asian trivia that spans the whole continent, not just one corner of it. Geography questions cover Everest, Baikal, the Dead Sea, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Ganges, the Maldives and Indonesia's 17,000 islands; history takes in the Great Wall, the Silk Road, Genghis Khan and Singapore's independence; culture covers Diwali, Holi, Songkran, Buddhism and Hinduism, and inventions such as chess and paper. Food and pop culture get their own share: kimchi, sushi and pho, Bollywood, K-pop and BTS, anime and Osamu Tezuka, plus the Burj Khalifa, the Petronas Towers and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Easy questions come first and the harder ones will stretch geography teachers and travellers alike. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the places, events and traditions, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 124 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which ancient city in Jordan did the Nabataeans carve into rose-coloured sandstone cliffs?
Petra
Petra's Treasury, Al-Khazneh, played the entrance to the Holy Grail's resting place in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Q 02What is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level?
Everest
Everest's most recent survey, in 2020, put it at 8,848.86 metres; it is called Sagarmatha in Nepal and Qomolangma in Tibet.
Q 03Peak XV now bears the surname of Sir George, a Briton who had held which post?
Surveyor General
Sir George, a former Surveyor General of India, opposed the honour, saying his name could not be written in Hindi or pronounced by Indians.
Q 04Which beekeeper first topped the world's highest peak alongside Tenzing Norgay?
Edmund Hillary
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing summited on 29 May 1953, and the news broke in London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.
Q 05Which lake is the deepest in the world, holding around 22-23% of Earth's fresh surface water?
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is a rift lake in southern Siberia, slightly larger than Belgium and 1,642 metres deep at most.
Q 06What is the world's largest inland body of water, straddling Europe and Asia?
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea has no natural outflow and is often called the world's largest lake; the Volga, Europe's longest river, feeds it.
Q 07The shores of which lake are the lowest land-based point on Earth?
The Dead Sea
The Dead Sea is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean, and its water is so dense that swimming in it feels like floating.
Q 08Which is the longest river in China and third-longest in the world?
Yangtze
The Yangtze is Chang Jiang, 'Long River', in Chinese, and it meets the East China Sea at Shanghai.
Q 09Which river's monsoon floodwater makes Cambodia's Tonlé Sap river flow backward each year?
Mekong
The Mekong, known in China as the Lancang, swells the Tonlé Sap lake from about 2,500 to 16,000 square kilometres in the rainy season.
Q 10In Bangladesh, which great river's main channel is called the Padma?
Ganges
The Ganges flows into Bangladesh as the Padma and, with the Brahmaputra, builds the world's largest river delta.
Q 11Which is the smallest country in Asia by land area?
Maldives
The Maldives' 26 atolls hold just 298 square kilometres of land, spread over some 90,000 square kilometres of ocean.
Q 12Which island nation became a tea giant after coffee rust wiped out its coffee plantations in the 19th century?
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, then British Ceylon, lost its coffee estates to leaf rust from 1869, and planters turned to tea, which James Taylor had introduced in 1867.
Q 13What does 'Gobi', the name of the desert across southern Mongolia and northern China, mean in Mongolian?
Dryland
Dryland: Mongolians use the word Gov' for waterless regions, and much of the Gobi is bare rock rather than sand.
Q 21Which Chinese dynasty's expansion into Central Asia around 114 BCE began the Silk Road?
Han
The Han envoy Zhang Qian's missions opened the routes, and China extended the Great Wall to protect the trade.
Q 22Chess descends from which 7th-century Indian game?
Chaturanga
Chaturanga reached Sasanian Persia as chatrang, or shatranj, and that form of the game was carried on to medieval Europe.
Q 23Papermaking is traditionally credited to which Chinese court official, around 105 CE?
Cai Lun
Cai Lun, a court eunuch, added tree bark and hemp to the pulp, though paper-like material in China is older still.
Q 14Which building ended the Petronas Towers' reign as the world's tallest in 2004?
Taipei 101
Taipei 101 is steadied by a 660-tonne steel pendulum, a tuned mass damper hung between its 87th and 92nd floors.
Q 15What is the largest religious complex in the world?
Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century to honour Vishnu, later became a Buddhist temple, and appears on Cambodia's national flag.
Q 16The 9th-century Buddhist temple of Borobudur stands on which island?
Java
Java's Borobudur, the world's largest Buddhist temple, drew world attention in 1814 through Stamford Raffles, then British ruler of the island.
Q 17The white marble mausoleum at Agra was built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for whom?
His wife Mumtaz
His wife Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631, and the Taj Mahal was raised over her tomb on the Yamuna at Agra.
Q 18The best-known sections of the Great Wall of China were built by which dynasty?
Ming
The Ming built in brick and stone instead of rammed earth after the Oirat Mongols routed a Ming army at Tumu in 1449.
Q 19The Great Wall's most-visited section, Badaling, lies on the outskirts of which capital city?
Beijing
Badaling, about 80 km north-west of central Beijing, once guarded the approach to the capital, and millions visit it every year.
Q 20Who was proclaimed ruler of all Mongols in 1206, founding the largest contiguous empire in history?
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan was born Temüjin, and after his father was poisoned, his family was abandoned by its tribe on the steppe.
Q 24Which is the world's third-largest religion, with about 1.17 billion followers mainly in India and Nepal?
Hinduism
Hinduism has no single founder, and many followers call it Sanātana Dharma, 'the eternal dharma'.
Q 25Which is the largest branch of Buddhism, dominant in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam?
Mahayana
Mahayana means 'Great Vehicle', and its traditions include Zen and Pure Land Buddhism.
Q 26Diwali, the festival of lights, is linked to the return of which deity to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana?
Rama
Diwali means a row of lamps, lit to mark Rama's return to Ayodhya with Sita and Lakshmana.
Q 27Holi, India's festival of colours, celebrates the love between which two deities?
Radha and Krishna
Holi celebrates the love of Radha and Krishna, and it also marks Vishnu's victory as Narasimha over Hiranyakashipu.
Q 28Which Thai new year festival is famous for nationwide public water fights?
Songkran
Songkran begins on 13 April, and its public water fights symbolise ritual cleansing for the new year.
Q 29Kimchi is most often made from which vegetable?
Napa cabbage
Kimchi is most often made from napa cabbage, and winter kimchi, gimjang, was stored in buried onggi jars to keep it from freezing.
Q 30Which Japanese dish began as fish fermented in rice, with the rice thrown away before eating?
Sushi
Sushi's early form, narezushi, was eaten for the fish alone; vinegared rice came much later, and nigiri followed around 1824.