Chinese Food Trivia
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50 free Chinese Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Chinese food trivia quiz covers the real thing and the takeaway favourites: Peking duck and dim sum, mapo tofu and Kung Pao chicken, xiaolongbao, hot pot, dandan noodles, char siu, mooncakes and zongzi, plus the sauces and tools behind them — soy, hoisin, oyster sauce, Sichuan pepper, chopsticks and the wok. It also digs into the stories: which dishes were invented in New York rather than Hunan, where fortune cookies actually come from, why jiaozi look like ingots, who Su Dongpo and General Tso were, and how the Eight Cuisines of China came to be named. Expect a few surprises about congee, century eggs and a Chinese buffalo-milk cheese. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. For the festival side of the table, try our Chinese New Year quiz too.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the classic filling of a traditional Cantonese mooncake?
Lotus seed paste and salted yolk
The whole yolk in the centre stands for the full moon that the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates.
Q 02When are mooncakes traditionally eaten?
The Mid-Autumn Festival
The festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month and is tied to legends of the moon goddess Chang'e.
Q 03What are zongzi wrapped in?
Bamboo leaves
The glutinous-rice parcels are eaten at the Dragon Boat Festival, popularly linked to the poet Qu Yuan who drowned himself in 278 BC.
Q 04Which poet's death is commemorated with zongzi and dragon boat races?
Qu Yuan
He died in 278 BC, though the earliest documented link between him and the rice dumplings dates from the 5th century AD.
Q 05Jiaozi dumplings are said to bring prosperity because they resemble which object?
Gold and silver ingots
Many families eat them at midnight on New Year's Eve, and some hide a clean coin inside one for luck.
Q 06Legend credits jiaozi to the physician Zhang Zhongjing as a cure for what?
Frostbitten ears
The dumplings were originally called 'tender ears' and were folded to look like the ears they were meant to heal.
Q 07A 1980 People's Daily article named how many great regional cuisines of China?
Eight
The 1980 list, from a People's Daily article, names Anhui, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan and Zhejiang.
Q 08Which grain-based foods are dietary staples in northern China's dry climate?
Noodles, porridge and bread
The wheat-growing north contrasts with the rice-growing south, a divide that shapes almost every regional menu.
Q 09How long are ducks raised before slaughter for authentic Peking duck?
65 days
Authentic versions serve mostly the crisp skin, carved by the cook in front of diners and rolled into pancakes with spring onion and sweet bean sauce.
Q 10Which Beijing restaurant, founded in 1416, was the first to specialise in Peking duck?
Bianyifang
Its rival Quanjude, opened in 1864, popularised the hung-oven method; Bianyifang still uses the older closed oven.
Q 11In which country did fortune cookies most likely originate?
Japan
A similar cookie was made in Kyoto in the 19th century; Japanese immigrants brought it to California, where Chinese restaurants later adopted it.
Q 12Where is Wonton Food, the world's largest fortune cookie maker, headquartered?
Brooklyn
It turns out more than 4.5 million cookies a day, out of roughly 3 billion made worldwide each year.
Q 13Which San Francisco attraction is credited with first serving fortune cookies in the US?
The Japanese Tea Garden
Makoto Hagiwara served them in the early 1900s, with the cookies baked by a local shop called Benkyodo.
Q 21What gives Sichuan pepper its tingling, numbing sensation?
Hydroxy-alpha sanshool
Despite the name it is not related to black pepper or chilli; the spice is the dried husk of a Zanthoxylum fruit.
Q 22What does the Sichuan flavour term 'mala' mean?
Numb-spiciness
It combines Sichuan pepper's tingle with chilli heat and defines dishes like Chongqing hot pot.
Q 23Xiaolongbao soup dumplings are traditionally steamed in what?
A small bamboo basket
The name literally refers to the little steaming basket; the most famous style abroad comes from Nanxiang near Shanghai.
Q 14General Tso's chicken is named after a general from which Chinese province?
Hunan
Zuo Zongtang died in 1885, nearly a century before the sweet, crispy dish was invented in the 1970s.
Q 15Where did chef Peng Chang-kuei open the restaurant that popularised General Tso's chicken?
New York City
He opened Uncle Peng's Hunan Yuan on East 44th Street around 1973; a rival chef, T. T. Wang, also claimed the dish.
Q 16Which Qing statesman's 1896 US visit is one popular myth for the origin of chop suey?
Li Hongzhang
An 1884 Brooklyn newspaper article had already called it 'the national dish of China', so the story is almost certainly false.
Q 17Chop suey has been traced to tsap seui, a leftovers dish from which town?
Taishan
The name means 'miscellaneous leftovers'; Taishan was home to many of the earliest Chinese immigrants to the United States.
Q 18Kung Pao chicken is believed to be named after the title of which Qing official?
Ding Baozhen
He was governor of Sichuan; during the Cultural Revolution the imperial-sounding name was dropped and the dish became plain 'spicy chicken'.
Q 19What does 'mapo' in mapo tofu literally describe?
A pockmarked old woman
The dish is tied to a Chengdu eatery run by a couple named Chen in the 1860s or 1870s; the nickname was Mrs Chen's.
Q 20Which city is the birthplace of mapo tofu?
Chengdu
UNESCO named the Sichuan capital a City of Gastronomy in 2011.
Q 24Xiaolongbao originated in which Jiangsu city?
Changzhou
They evolved from the soup-filled dumplings of Kaifeng, the Northern Song capital.
Q 25What does 'dandan' in dandan noodles refer to?
A carrying pole
Street vendors carried noodles and sauce in baskets slung from either end of the pole over their shoulder.
Q 26What does the Cantonese word 'hoisin' literally mean?
Seafood
The dark, sweet sauce contains no seafood at all; its key ingredient is fermented soybean paste.
Q 27What does 'char siu' literally mean in Cantonese?
Fork roasted
The pork shoulder is marinated in hoisin, soy, rose wine and five-spice, then roasted on long forks.
Q 28What kind of dough is used for the fried Chinese breakfast stick youtiao?
Wheat flour
It is usually dunked in congee or soy milk, or wrapped in a rice noodle roll to make zhaliang.
Q 29Guangzhou's dan tat pastry of the 1920s was modelled on which foreign dessert?
The English custard tart
It appeared in early 20th-century Guangzhou department stores; the Macau version instead follows the Portuguese pastel de nata.
Q 30Which Song dynasty poet gave his name to a red-braised pork belly dish from Hangzhou?
Su Dongpo
He wrote an 'Ode to Pork' while in exile, praising the cheap meat slow-cooked with wine, sugar and soy.