Guangdong
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50 free Guangdong trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Guangdong sits on China's southern coast and holds more people than any other province, most of them packed into a ring of cities around one river delta. Its 21 prefecture-level cities range from a provincial capital with more than two thousand years of trading history to a border town that became a tech metropolis within a single generation. This quiz covers the cities of Guangdong one by one: which is which, what each is known for, and how they fit together. Expect questions on geography and borders, treaty ports and special economic zones, emperors, rebels and reformers, as well as the food, language, sport and household-name companies that came out of the province. It suits travellers planning a trip, students of Chinese geography and history, and anyone who has wondered where their phone, drone or lunch was first made. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will know the map a little better by the end.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Guangdong city on the Hong Kong border became China's first special economic zone in the early 1980s?
Shenzhen
Shenzhen was picked for its closeness to Hong Kong, which drew foreign investment and migrants to what had been a small market town.
Q 02Dafen, an urban village in Guangdong, is known around the world for workshops that mass-produce copies of what?
Oil paintings
Oil paintings leave Dafen by the million: as of 2014 about 7,000 artists there were copying masters such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt for export.
Q 03Which city, the capital and largest city of Guangdong, hosted the Asian Games in 2010?
Guangzhou
Guangzhou was for a long time the only Chinese port open to European traders, which made it one of the world's great trading cities.
Q 04Chimelong Safari Park in Guangdong is the birthplace of a famous set of surviving triplets of which animal?
Giant pandas
Giant pandas put Chimelong Safari Park on the map; the group behind it began in 1989 as one restaurant run by a Panyu local, Su Zhigang.
Q 05Which style of bite-sized dishes, served with tea in Guangdong's teahouses, is the heart of a yum cha meal?
Dim sum
Dim sum grew out of teahouses in Guangdong's capital, where tenth-century travellers stopped for small plates with their tea.
Q 06Which Chinese leader's 1992 southern tour of Guangdong revived market reforms that had stalled after 1989?
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was 87 when he set off, and the remarks he made on the road restarted his reform and opening-up programme.
Q 07Which Paris landmark is rebuilt at one-third scale at Window of the World, a theme park in Guangdong?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower copy stands 108 metres tall and rises over about 130 reproductions of world landmarks.
Q 08Which Guangdong city was home to the kung fu masters Ip Man and Wong Fei-hung?
Foshan
Foshan is also regarded as the home of lion dancing and of the martial art Nanquan.
Q 09Which Guangdong city borders Macau and gained a road link to Hong Kong when a giant sea bridge opened in 2018?
Zhuhai
Zhuhai also hosts the largest air show in China, a big draw for visitors to the city.
Q 10Which animals, said to have carried five immortals to Guangdong's capital, give the city its best-known nickname?
Rams
Rams made it the City of the Five Rams: legend says they turned to stone once the immortals had brought rice farming to the area.
Q 11Which Guangdong factory city built a giant shopping mall that sat mostly vacant for more than a decade?
Dongguan
Dongguan's mall ranks among the largest on Earth by floor area, but so few merchants signed up that it was dubbed a dead mall.
Q 12Which waterway, China's third longest, gathers the Xi, Bei and Dong before reaching the sea in Guangdong?
Pearl River
The Pearl River carries more water than any Chinese river except the Yangtze, and its basin reaches into northern Vietnam.
Q 13Which tropical island was governed as part of Guangdong until it became a separate province in 1988?
Hainan
Hainan was made a special economic zone in the same year it split away, in an effort to pull in investment.
Q 21Which Guangdong county-level city is known for its diaolou, fortified towers that UNESCO listed in 2007?
Kaiping
Kaiping has 1,833 of the towers standing; building peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, paid for with money from overseas Chinese.
Q 22Which city in eastern Guangdong is home to Guangji Bridge, whose middle section is a row of boats that can open?
Chaozhou
Chaozhou's crossing is counted among China's four famous ancient bridges, and its floating section parts to let ships through.
Q 23Which city in eastern Guangdong is the Hakka heartland, whose local dialect is treated as the prestige form of Hakka?
Meizhou
Meizhou's Meixian district gives the prestige dialect its name, and the general Ye Jianying is among the area's notable natives.
Q 14Which variety of Chinese, the lingua franca of Guangdong, is also the dominant language of Hong Kong?
Cantonese
Cantonese is co-official in both Hong Kong and Macau, and it is widely spoken in overseas Chinese communities.
Q 15Which major line of latitude crosses Guangdong, passing just north of the provincial capital?
Tropic of Cancer
The Tropic of Cancer puts Guangdong's capital just inside the tropics on paper, yet the city's climate is classed as humid subtropical.
Q 16Which fruit was so prized at the Han imperial court that fast-horse couriers carried it fresh from Guangdong?
Lychee
Lychee was later the favourite fruit of Yang Guifei, the famed consort of the Tang emperor Xuanzong.
Q 17Which Guangdong city, once called Xiangshan, was renamed in 1925 to honour the local-born revolutionary Sun Yat-sen?
Zhongshan
Zhongshan is the name by which Sun Yat-sen is known in China, and the old name Xiangshan meant Fragrant Mountain.
Q 18Guangdong has about 4,300 kilometres of coastline along the north shore of which body of water?
South China Sea
The South China Sea holds Pratas Island, which was part of Guangdong before the Chinese Civil War and is administered from Taiwan.
Q 19Which tech giant, headquartered in twin towers in Guangdong's Nanshan district, runs the messaging apps QQ and WeChat?
Tencent
Tencent was founded in 1998, and WeChat grew into a super app with more than a billion monthly users.
Q 20Which treaty port in eastern Guangdong was an original special economic zone but never boomed like its rivals?
Shantou
Shantou, long romanised as Swatow, opened to foreigners in 1860 under the Treaty of Tientsin.
Q 24Which city in northern Guangdong is the gateway to Mount Danxia, a UNESCO-listed landscape of red sandstone cliffs?
Shaoguan
Shaoguan also holds Nanhua Temple, closely tied to Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism.
Q 25Which Guangdong city has a West Lake that the exiled Song poet Su Shi judged as beautiful as Hangzhou's?
Huizhou
Huizhou's lake was formerly called Feng Lake, and Su Shi, banished to the city in 1094, is credited with giving it the West Lake name.
Q 26Which Guangdong city's museum earned a Guinness World Record for a collection of more than 10,000 dinosaur eggs?
Heyuan
Heyuan has been titled the Hometown of the Dinosaur in China, and skeletons and fossil footprints have turned up nearby too.
Q 27Which port city in western Guangdong was leased to France in 1898 and developed under the name Fort Bayard?
Zhanjiang
Zhanjiang was a small fishing port when France forced a 99-year lease on the area; Japan occupied the enclave in 1943, and it went back to China after the war.
Q 28Which Guangdong city hosted the first Jesuit mission house in mainland China, the home of the missionary Matteo Ricci?
Zhaoqing
Zhaoqing's governor let the Jesuits stay after learning of Ricci's skill with maths and maps, and Ricci drew the first modern Chinese world map there in 1584.
Q 29Which Guangdong district, home to a Bruce Lee museum, joined UNESCO's Creative Cities Network for its gastronomy?
Shunde
Shunde is regarded as the cradle of the region's top chefs, and it is also the home base of the appliance maker Midea.
Q 30In 1952 Guangdong gave a strip of its coast, including the port of Beihai, to which landlocked neighbour?
Guangxi
Guangxi lost the strip again in 1955 and got it back in 1965, which left it the only autonomous region that is not landlocked.