East Asia
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50 free East Asia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
East Asia packs about a fifth of the world's people into a handful of countries: China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan. The region runs from frozen steppe to tropical coast, and from the highest ground on the planet down to some of its busiest harbours. This quiz starts with the map. It asks which capital belongs to which country, where the great cities sit, and which mountains, deserts, rivers, seas and islands shape the region. It then turns to the stories behind the places: emperors and conquerors, a divided peninsula, record-breaking engineering, and the writing, festivals and everyday culture that travelled far beyond the region's borders. It suits students revising East Asian geography, teachers who want a ready-made round on countries and capitals, and anyone planning a trip. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still leaves you knowing more.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city, the coldest national capital on Earth, is home to almost half of Mongolia's people?
Ulaanbaatar
Ulaanbaatar is so cold because of its high elevation, its distance from any coast and the Siberian anticyclone. Its name, adopted in 1924, means 'Red Hero'.
Q 02Which arid region shared by China and Mongolia yielded the first dinosaur eggs recognised by science?
Gobi Desert
The Gobi Desert gave up twenty-six dinosaur eggs in 1923, averaging 23 cm in length. It is a cold desert, and temperatures as low as −32.8 °C have been recorded in southern Mongolia.
Q 03Which city is home to the Ryugyong Hotel, a 330 m pyramid begun in 1987 and left unfinished for decades?
Pyongyang
Pyongyang watched work on the hotel stop in 1992, when North Korea's economy went into crisis after the Soviet Union dissolved. In 2018 one side was fitted with an LED display that shows propaganda animations.
Q 04Which South Korean company, whose name means 'three stars', began in 1938 trading dried fish and noodles?
Samsung
Samsung spent three decades moving into food processing, textiles, insurance and retail before it entered the electronics industry in the late 1960s. Lee Byung-chul founded it as a trading company.
Q 05Which dam in China's Hubei province is the largest power station on Earth by installed capacity?
Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges Dam stores so much water that NASA scientists calculated the shifted mass would lengthen Earth's day by 0.06 microseconds. Its installed capacity is 22,500 MW.
Q 06Which script did King Sejong introduce in the 1440s so that ordinary Koreans could read and write?
Hangul
Hangul bases the shapes of five basic consonants on the human speech organs that make the sounds. Before it, Koreans wrote in Chinese characters so difficult that commoners were largely illiterate.
Q 07Which ruler, born Temüjin, united the Mongol tribes and founded the largest contiguous empire in history?
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan took that title at an assembly in 1206, and its meaning is still uncertain. By his death in 1227 his empire ran from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.
Q 08Which city, handed over to China by Britain in 1997, has a name that translates as 'fragrant harbour'?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong was handed over at midnight on 1 July 1997, after 156 years of British rule. The 'fragrant' in its name may refer to incense factories that lined the coast of northern Kowloon.
Q 09Which city's bamboo-inspired tower of 101 floors opened in 2004 as the tallest building in the world?
Taipei
Taipei 101 held the height record until the Burj Khalifa surpassed it in 2009. Its lifts were the fastest in the world when it was completed, rising from the 5th to the 89th floor in 37 seconds.
Q 10Which volcano, the highest peak in Japan, has stayed quiet since an eruption that began in December 1707?
Mount Fuji
Mount Fuji became a frequent subject of Japanese art after 1600, when people travelling the Tōkaidō road saw the mountain on the way. Snow covers its symmetrical cone for about five months of the year.
Q 11Which Japanese city grew from a small fishing village called Edo into the seat of the Tokugawa shoguns?
Tokyo
Tokyo had more than a million people by the mid-18th century, which made it one of the largest cities in the world. It took its present name, meaning 'Eastern Capital', in 1868.
Q 12Which city became the first to host both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, in 2008 and 2022?
Beijing
Beijing means 'Northern Capital', a name applied in 1403 to distinguish the city from Nanjing, the 'Southern Capital'. It has also hosted both the Summer and Winter Paralympics.
Q 13Which city's metropolitan area, which takes in Incheon, holds more than half of South Korea's people?
Seoul
Seoul comes from a native Korean common noun that simply means 'capital city'. Its metropolitan area also takes in the surrounding Gyeonggi Province.
Q 21Which belt of volcanoes, where about 90% of the world's earthquakes occur, runs through Japan and Taiwan?
Ring of Fire
The Ring of Fire is about 40,000 km long and surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean. Off Japan and Taiwan, the Philippine Plate is being forced beneath the Eurasian Plate.
Q 22Which sea, known in South Korea as the East Sea, is so nearly enclosed that it has almost no tides?
Sea of Japan
The Sea of Japan has a name disputed between Japan, North Korea and South Korea. Its isolation from the Pacific also leaves its water less salty than the open ocean.
Q 23Which line of latitude did two US officers pick from a National Geographic map in 1945 to divide Korea?
38th parallel
Q 14Which city, nicknamed the 'thousand-year capital', did Japan's emperors rule from for eleven centuries?
Kyoto
Kyoto was chosen as the seat of the imperial court by Emperor Kanmu in 794. It was spared large-scale destruction in World War II, so most of its prewar cultural heritage survives.
Q 15Which river, the longest in Asia, has a basin that is home to nearly one-third of China's population?
Yangtze
The Yangtze is called Chang Jiang in Chinese, meaning 'Long River'. It is the third-longest river in the world, and its basin covers one-fifth of China's land area.
Q 16Which waterway, nicknamed 'China's Sorrow' as well as 'China's Pride', is regarded as a cradle of civilisation?
Yellow River
The Yellow River earned the 'Sorrow' through floods such as that of 1887, which killed between 900,000 and 2 million people. Its colour comes from sediment picked up as it crosses the Loess Plateau.
Q 17Which mountain, called Sagarmatha in Nepali, marks part of the China–Nepal border at its summit?
Mount Everest
Mount Everest honours Sir George Everest, who told the Royal Geographical Society in 1857 that the name could not be written in Hindi. The society officially adopted it anyway in 1865.
Q 18Which upland, with an average elevation above 4,500 m, is often called 'the Roof of the World'?
Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau is also termed the Third Pole, because its ice fields hold the largest reserve of fresh water outside the polar regions. Its tens of thousands of glaciers act as a natural water tower.
Q 19Which island, Japan's northernmost prefecture, was known as Ezo until it was renamed in 1869?
Hokkaido
Hokkaido was primarily inhabited by the Ainu people until Japan annexed and colonised the entire island in 1869. It is the second-largest island of Japan.
Q 20What name is given to a hurricane-strength tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific, off East Asia?
Typhoon
A typhoon forms in the most active storm basin on Earth, which accounts for almost one third of the world's tropical cyclones. The basin has no official season, because storms form there throughout the year.
The 38th parallel was chosen on extremely short notice by Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel. Rusk later said he would almost surely have picked a different line had he known Korean history.
Q 24Which territory, ruled by Portugal for 442 years until 1999, is known as the gambling capital of the world?
Macau
Macau is also the most densely populated region in the world, and two-thirds of its area is built on land reclaimed from the sea. It opened its casino industry to foreign investors after the handover.
Q 25Which dynasty, ruling China from 1368 to 1644, built the best-known sections of the Great Wall?
Ming
The Ming turned to wall-building after a defeat by the Oirats at the Battle of Tumu, using bricks and stone instead of rammed earth. From the Moon, the wall cannot be seen by the naked eye.
Q 26Which palace complex of 980 buildings was home to 24 Chinese emperors over about five centuries?
Forbidden City
The Forbidden City claims 9,999 rooms, though surveys count 8,886 bays of rooms. It ceased to be China's political centre in 1912, when Puyi, the last emperor, abdicated.
Q 27Which archaeological treasure outside Xi'an was found in 1974 by Chinese farmers digging a well?
Terracotta Army
The Terracotta Army depicts the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, and stands near his tomb mound at Mount Li. The majority of the figures remain in place in the three pits.
Q 28Which Japanese city was hit on 6 August 1945 by 'Little Boy', the first atomic bomb used in war?
Hiroshima
Hiroshima was an embarkation port and industrial centre that housed a major military headquarters. The bombing order named Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki as the other possible targets.
Q 29Which Chinese philosopher had his sayings compiled in the Analects many years after his death?
Confucius
Confucius is a Latinised name coined by Jesuit missionaries to China in the late 16th century. In the Analects he presents himself as a transmitter who invented nothing.
Q 30Which 'bullet train' network began service nine days before the 1964 Summer Olympics opened in Japan?
Shinkansen
The Shinkansen carried over 10 billion passengers in its first 60 years without a passenger death from a derailment or collision. Its first line linked the four largest cities in Japan.