Qin Shi Huang Trivia
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58 free Qin Shi Huang trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Qin Shi Huang trivia quiz covers the man who unified China in 221 BC and invented the title of emperor. The easy questions are the ones any history reader knows: the country, the dynasty, the wall, the tomb and the clay army guarding it. From there the set moves into the strange and vivid details recorded by Sima Qian: the merchant Lü Buwei who may have been his real father, the coup by his mother's lover, the assassin whose dagger was hidden in a rolled map, the blind musician who swung a lead-weighted zither, and the strongman who smashed the wrong carriage with a 97-kilogram cone. The harder end covers his reign as emperor: the commanderies that replaced feudal states, the standardised axle widths and Ban Liang coin, the seal script, the twelve bronze colossi, the Lingqu Canal, the burning of books and the disputed burial of scholars, the five-elements theory that made black the imperial colour, his hunt for the elixir of life, his death on tour and the carts of rotten fish that hid the smell of his body. It ends with the tomb at Mount Li, the mercury readings that suggest Sima Qian was right, and how Mao and modern historians have re-judged him. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the emperor, his dynasty and his officials before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Terracotta Army, Great Wall of China and ancient China quizzes next.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is distinctive about the faces of Qin Shi Huang's terracotta warriors?
Each one is different
Each one is different: the heads came from only a handful of moulds, but craftsmen reworked every face, beard and hairstyle by hand in fresh clay, so the ranks look like an army of real men.
Q 02Today's brick Great Wall dates from the Ming dynasty, so what were Qin Shi Huang's frontier walls mostly built from?
Rammed earth
Rammed earth, local soil pounded hard in layers, weathers away, one reason very little of the First Emperor's wall still stands.
Q 03Qin Shi Huang boasted that his dynasty would last 10,000 generations, so roughly how long did it survive his death?
About 4 years
About 4 years: his heir's misrule set off revolts across the empire almost at once, and by 206 BC rebel armies had taken the capital and ended the dynasty.
Q 04What new title did the King of Qin create for himself in 221 BC, rather than keep the old title of king?
Huangdi
Huangdi joined huang and di, titles of mythical sage rulers, to outrank every king before him; he ordered his heirs to be numbered Second Emperor, Third Emperor and so on without end.
Q 05In which city, the capital of the state of Zhao, was the future First Emperor born?
Handan
Handan was where his father, a Qin prince, was being held hostage under a truce with Zhao, so the future emperor spent his first years among his state's enemies.
Q 06Which wealthy merchant helped Ying Zheng's father to the throne and later served as regent?
Lü Buwei
Lü Buwei sized up the neglected hostage prince as rare merchandise worth hoarding and spent a fortune making him heir; the old claim that he also fathered Ying Zheng is probably slander.
Q 07How was the future First Emperor's personal name, Zheng, said to have been chosen?
From the month of his birth
From the month of his birth: he was born in Zhengyue, the first month of the old Chinese calendar, and an early commentator says it was on the very first day.
Q 08Which man, disguised as a eunuch, became the lover of the King of Qin's mother and staged a coup in 238 BC?
Lao Ai
Lao Ai secretly fathered two sons with the queen dowager and meant one of them to be king; when the affair came out he used her seal to raise troops, and lost.
Q 09How was the false eunuch who led the 238 BC coup against the King of Qin executed?
Torn apart by horse carriages
Torn apart by horse carriages, as Sima Qian's annals have it, after a price of a million coins was put on his head alive and half that dead; his whole clan was wiped out with him.
Q 10How did the disgraced merchant who had been regent of Qin die in 235 BC?
He drank poisoned wine
He drank poisoned wine: stripped of office over the queen dowager scandal and ordered off to distant Shu, he feared execution would follow, and his death left the young king in sole charge.
Q 11Which assassin, sent by Crown Prince Dan of Yan in 227 BC, hid a dagger inside a rolled-up map?
Jing Ke
Jing Ke won his audience with two gifts: the map and the head of a Qin general who had fled to Yan and is said to have cut his own throat to help the plot.
Q 12Why was King Zheng's sword useless at first when an assassin's dagger appeared in 227 BC?
It was too long to draw
It was too long to draw: he dodged around a pillar until courtiers shouted at him to push the scabbard behind his back, then pulled the blade free and cut the assassin down.
Q 13The blinded musician Gao Jianli weighted his instrument with which metal to strike at Qin Shi Huang?
Lead
Q 21Which style of Chinese writing became the official standard under Qin Shi Huang?
Seal script
Seal script, in a simplified form known as small seal, replaced the rival regional scripts, so an order written in the capital could be read anywhere in the empire whatever dialect was spoken there.
Q 22What did Qin Shi Huang have cast from the weapons he confiscated across his new empire?
Twelve monumental statues
Twelve monumental statues stood in his palace, cast from the melted arms of the conquered states, a way of making sure that would-be rebels had nothing left to fight with.
Q 23Which school of thought became the official ideology of the Qin dynasty?
Legalism
Lead turned his zhu, a struck zither, into a club: the emperor so loved his playing that he let him sit closer each time, until he swung the weighted instrument and missed.
Q 14Why did Zhang Liang's hired strongman fail to kill Qin Shi Huang with a hurled hammer?
It hit the wrong carriage
It hit the wrong carriage: the heavy hammer smashed an escort vehicle, and though the emperor ordered an empire-wide manhunt, Zhang Liang slipped away and later helped to found the next dynasty.
Q 15Which was the first of the rival states to fall to Qin, in 230 BC?
Han
Han sat on Qin's doorstep and had been raided for years; its king had already offered to become a vassal when, in 230 BC, Qin captured him and turned his state into a commandery.
Q 16Which was the last state to be conquered, completing the unification of China in 221 BC?
Qi
Qi had sat out the wars, its chief minister bribed with Qin gold, while Qin swallowed the other states one by one; when the Qin army finally came in 221 BC, its king surrendered without a fight.
Q 17How did Qin forces bring about the surrender of Wei in 225 BC?
By flooding its capital
By flooding its capital: a Qin general turned river and canal water against the walls of Daliang until they gave way, and the king of Wei came out to surrender.
Q 18Which minister worked with Qin Shi Huang on the great programme of standardisation?
Li Si
Li Si, an outsider from Chu, nearly lost his post when the king ordered every foreign adviser expelled; his written protest got the order cancelled and launched his rise to chancellor.
Q 19How did governors of Qin Shi Huang's 36 commanderies get their posts?
By appointment
By appointment: the emperor's court chose the governors, who replaced hereditary lords, after his minister argued that handing out fiefs, even to royal sons, would only breed new warring states.
Q 20The Ban Liang, the coin Qin Shi Huang made standard, has what at its centre?
A square hole
A square hole let the coins be threaded on a cord in bulk, and the round coin with a square hole that he made standard stayed the pattern for Chinese cash into the 20th century.
Legalism held that people are kept in line by fixed laws with set rewards and harsh punishments, not by a ruler's good example, and Qin's brutal use of it later discredited the school in China.
Q 24Books on which subject were spared when Qin Shi Huang ordered most others burned in 213 BC?
Medicine
Medicine was spared along with manuals of fortune-telling and farming: the ban was aimed at works scholars used to criticise the present by praising the past, not at practical know-how.
Q 25Which classic escaped Qin's book burning as a practical manual?
Book of Changes
The Book of Changes, the I Ching, was read as a handbook for telling fortunes, a kind of book the edict left alone, so it was handed down without a break into the next dynasty.
Q 26Which of Qin Shi Huang's sons openly criticised his harsh punishment of scholars in 212 BC?
Fusu
Fusu, the eldest son, warned that such severity would unsettle a newly conquered empire; his furious father packed him off to the northern frontier to serve with the army.
Q 27Which element and colour did the Qin dynasty adopt under the theory of the five elements?
Water and black
Water and black: the Zhou were held to have ruled by the power of fire, and water is what overcomes fire, so Qin's court robes, flags and pennants all turned black.
Q 28Caught in a storm on Mount Tai, Qin Shi Huang rewarded what with an official rank for sheltering him?
A tree
A tree: he had climbed the sacred mountain in 219 BC to announce his unified empire to Heaven, and a pine on the way down is still shown to visitors as the Fifth-Rank Pine.
Q 29Which general led the 215 BC campaign that drove the Xiongnu from the Ordos Plateau?
Meng Tian
Meng Tian marched north with 300,000 men, cleared the great bend of the Yellow River and stayed on to fortify the frontier; legend also credits him, wrongly, with inventing the writing brush.
Q 30What did Qin Shi Huang order done to the old walls that had separated the former warring states?
Destroyed
Destroyed: walls between the old states had become barriers inside one empire and ready-made strongholds for any lord who rebelled, so they came down while the northern frontier defences stayed.