50 free Beijing trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Beijing has been Ji, Yanjing, Zhongdu, Dadu, Beiping and finally the Northern Capital, and this quiz walks through all of them. It covers Peking Man, Kublai Khan's Khanbaliq, the Yongle Emperor's Forbidden City, the fall of the Ming in 1644, the burning of the Old Summer Palace, the Boxers, the Marco Polo Bridge, Mao on the gate in 1949 and the Red Guard rallies of 1966. The landmarks follow: the 9,999 rooms and 24 emperors of the Forbidden City, the Gate of Heavenly Peace and what stands on the square, Zhongnanhai, the nail-free Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, Kunming Lake and Cixi's naval silver, the Great Wall sections, hutongs and siheyuan, China Zun and the 798 Art Zone. There are questions on the subway that replaced the city wall, Daxing airport, the Bird's Nest, 2008's 48 gold medals, Peking duck's oldest restaurant, Tsinghua and Peking universities and the sandstorms off the Gobi. Easy questions ask what Beijing means and what the Olympic stadium is called; hard ones want the year Bianyifang opened and who took the city forty days before the Manchus. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its sites, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our China and Great Wall quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the name Beijing mean in Chinese?
Northern Capital
The name was applied in 1403 to distinguish it from Nanjing, the 'Southern Capital'; the older spelling Peking dates from a 1655 Jesuit atlas.
Q 02With more than 21.8 million residents, Beijing holds what world record among capitals?
Most populous national capital
It is nonetheless only China's second-largest city by urban area.
Q 03The old spelling 'Peking' survives in the IATA code of Beijing Capital International Airport; what is it?
PEK
Peking University also keeps the old romanisation; the newer Daxing airport is coded PKX.
Q 04'Peking Man' fossils were found in caves at which site in Beijing municipality?
Zhoukoudian
The Dragon Bone Hill caves are among Beijing's UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Q 05Which Mongol ruler built Dadu (Khanbaliq) on the site of Beijing as his Yuan dynasty capital?
Kublai Khan
Genghis had razed the earlier Jin capital of Zhongdu in 1215; Dadu was built from 1264 to 1293 and remnants of its rammed-earth wall still stand.
Q 06Which Ming emperor moved the capital to Beijing and built the Forbidden City?
Yongle
Zhu Di, formerly Prince of Yan, had alienated Nanjing during his succession war; the Temple of Heaven and Tian'anmen date from the same building spree.
Q 07The Forbidden City was home to how many Ming and Qing emperors?
24
Fourteen were Ming and ten were Qing; the last, Puyi, abdicated in 1912 but stayed in the Inner Court until a 1924 coup evicted him.
Q 08The Forbidden City traditionally claims how many rooms, though experts count 8,886?
9,999
The 72-hectare complex is the largest preserved royal palace in the world.
Q 09Which institution has administered the Forbidden City since 1925?
The Palace Museum
Its collection was built on the Ming and Qing imperial holdings; the site became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
Q 10Tiananmen Square is named after the gate on its north side, whose name means what?
Heavenly Peace
The gate separates the square from the Forbidden City; the square itself was laid out in 1651 and enlarged fourfold in the 1950s.
Q 11On what date did Mao Zedong proclaim the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen?
1 October 1949
The anniversary is still observed on the square, where the flag is raised and lowered daily at sunrise and sunset.
Q 12Tiananmen Square measures roughly 765 by 282 metres; which of these buildings does NOT stand on it?
The Drum Tower
The Monument to the People's Heroes stands at its centre; the whole ensemble joined the UNESCO list in 2024 as part of the Beijing Central Axis.
Q 13Which walled compound west of Tian'anmen has housed China's top leadership since 1949?
Zhongnanhai
Q 21When the Kuomintang moved the capital to Nanjing in 1928, Beijing's name was changed to what?
Beiping
The name means 'Northern Peace' and had also been used by the early Ming before Beijing was made capital in 1403.
Q 22The Ming-era city wall stood until 1965, when it was pulled down to make way for what?
The first subway line
The Second Ring Road now traces the old wall's line; there is no official First Ring Road.
Q 23The Beijing Subway opened in which year, making it the oldest rapid-transit system in mainland China?
1971
It had only two lines before a rapid expansion from 2002 and became the world's longest metro system by route length in December 2023.
Zhongnanhai is the headquarters of the Communist Party and the residence of its senior leaders; the Gang of Four were arrested there in October 1976.
Q 14At the Temple of Heaven, Ming and Qing emperors performed annual ceremonies of prayer for what?
A good harvest
Its Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is a 38-metre triple-gabled circular hall built entirely of wood without nails.
Q 15The Temple of Heaven's Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is built entirely of wood using what?
No nails
The 36-metre-wide round hall stands on three marble terraces; its columns and levels symbolise the structure of the cosmos.
Q 16The Summer Palace's Kunming Lake, covering 2.2 square kilometres, was created how?
Entirely by human excavation
The soil dug out was piled up to make the 60-metre Longevity Hill; three-quarters of the 2.9-square-kilometre estate is water.
Q 17Empress Dowager Cixi reportedly diverted silver from what into rebuilding the Summer Palace?
Upgrading the Qing navy
Up to 22 million taels meant for the Beiyang Fleet went into the gardens; UNESCO listed the palace in 1998.
Q 18Anglo-French forces looted and burned the Old Summer Palace in 1860 during which conflict?
The Second Opium War
The Convention of Peking that ended the war let Western powers keep permanent diplomatic missions in the city for the first time.
Q 19The 1900 Battle of Peking, in which eight foreign powers reoccupied the city, was part of which uprising?
The Boxer Rebellion
The 1901 settlement imposed a huge indemnity, and legation guards stayed until World War II.
Q 20An exchange of fire on 7 July 1937 at which crossing near Beijing triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War?
The Marco Polo Bridge
The city fell to Japan on 29 July and became seat of a puppet 'Provisional Government'.
Q 24In December 2023 the Beijing Subway passed which city's system as the world's longest?
Shanghai
Its 909 km of track and 541 stations set a single-day ridership record of 13.75 million in July 2019.
Q 25Beijing Daxing International Airport, opened in September 2019, is described as the world's largest what?
Single-structure terminal
It lies 46 km south of the city, while Capital Airport was Asia's busiest for the decade before the pandemic.
Q 26The Beijing National Stadium, built for the 2008 Olympics, is nicknamed what?
The Bird's Nest
Ai Weiwei was artistic consultant; the steel lattice hides the supports for a planned retractable roof.
Q 27Which Swiss architecture firm won the 2003 competition to design the National Stadium?
Herzog & de Meuron
The design grew from a study of Chinese ceramics; the stadium cost US$428 million and seats 80,000.
Q 28By hosting the 2022 Games, Beijing became the first city to have done what?
Hosted both Summer and Winter Olympics
The 2022 events were held without spectators because of the pandemic; the 2008 Games remain the only Beijing Olympics with crowds.
Q 29How many gold medals did host China win at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
48
China took 100 medals in all; Michael Phelps won more golds than any athlete at a single Games and Usain Bolt set world records in the sprints.
Q 30The 2008 Games were the third Olympics held in East Asia, after which two cities?
Tokyo and Seoul
They ran from 8 to 24 August 2008, with 10,942 athletes from 204 committees competing in 302 events.