Qing Dynasty
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50 free Qing Dynasty trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Qing ruled China for nearly three centuries, from the day Manchu horsemen rode through the northern passes in 1644 to the abdication of a child emperor in 1912. In between came some of the widest borders China has ever had, a dress code enforced on pain of death, wars over a banned drug, and uprisings that cost millions of lives. This quiz covers the whole span: the founders in the northeast, the long-lived emperors of the 1700s, the court's dealings with European envoys and missionaries, the unequal treaties, the rebels and modernisers of the 1800s, and the revolution that ended it all. You will also meet the novels, fashions and stage traditions the era left behind. The questions run from pub-quiz friendly to properly hard, so the quiz works for students revising Chinese history, for fans of period dramas, and for anyone curious how a dynasty of outsiders came to rule the world's most populous empire.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which hairstyle, a shaved forehead and a long braid, did the Qing force on Han Chinese men?
The queue
The queue was compulsory, and refusing it was punished as treason, by execution. After the 1911 revolution, the hairstyle vanished almost overnight.
Q 02Which island did the Qing cede to Britain in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking after the First Opium War?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong Island was handed over 'in perpetuity' as a harbour where British traders could refit their ships. It went back to China only in 1997.
Q 03Which former concubine ruled Qing China from behind a curtain for nearly half a century until 1908?
Cixi
Cixi entered the palace as a teenage concubine, bore the emperor a son in 1856 and took power as regent in 1861. She later installed her own nephew on the throne.
Q 04Which uprising in Qing China was crushed by an Eight-Nation Alliance sent to lift a siege of foreign legations?
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion takes its English name from the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. Its fighters were convinced that foreign weapons could not harm them.
Q 05Which last Qing emperor took the throne as a toddler and later worked as a gardener in Beijing?
Puyi
Puyi was not yet three when he was enthroned in 1908, and he was made to abdicate in 1912. A loyalist general put him back on the throne for twelve days in 1917.
Q 06Which Qing export did Britain crave so much that its merchants smuggled in opium to pay for it?
Tea
Tea drained so much British silver into China that the East India Company began selling Indian-grown opium to traders who shipped it the other way.
Q 07Which Han Chinese custom, shunned by Manchu women, did Qing emperors repeatedly try and fail to ban?
Foot binding
Foot binding was outlawed by edict in 1636, 1638 and 1664, and each ban failed. The practice began to die out only in the early 20th century.
Q 08Which creature appeared beside a flaming red pearl on the yellow Qing dynasty national flag?
A dragon
A dragon in azure blue filled the flag adopted in 1889, usually called the Yellow Dragon Flag. It is counted as the first national flag of China.
Q 09Which Qing general, who reconquered China's far west, gave his name to a sweet fried chicken dish?
Zuo Zongtang
Zuo Zongtang is the General Tso of General Tso's chicken, yet the dish was invented only in the 1970s, long after his death in 1885.
Q 10Which Qing emperor, enthroned as a small boy, reigned for a record 61 years?
Kangxi
Kangxi took real power as a teenager in 1669 by having his overbearing regent Oboi arrested. He then ruled in person until his death in 1722.
Q 11Which Qing emperor abdicated after 60 years so that his reign would not outlast his grandfather's record?
Qianlong
Qianlong stepped down in 1796 in name only. He kept hold of real power as 'emperor emeritus' until he died three years later at the age of 87.
Q 12Which civil war against the Qing, fought from a rebel capital at Nanjing, ranks among the bloodiest in history?
Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion lasted 14 years and killed an estimated 20 to 30 million people, a toll comparable to that of the First World War.
Q 13Which doctor turned revolutionary became the first provisional president of China as Qing rule collapsed?
Sun Yat-sen
Q 21Rivalry over which neighbouring kingdom dragged the Qing into a disastrous war with Japan in 1894?
Korea
Korea was still a Qing tributary state, while Japan saw it as a target for expansion. The war that settled the matter lasted less than nine months.
Q 22Which close-fitting garment, made fashionable in 1920s Shanghai, draws on the robes of Manchu women under the Qing?
Cheongsam
The cheongsam is also called the qipao, a word that first meant a loose robe worn by Manchu men and women alike. The tight cut came much later.
Q 23Which novel by Cao Xueqin circulated in unfinished 80-chapter manuscripts for decades before it was printed?
Dream of the Red Chamber
Sun Yat-sen was in the United States when the revolution broke out and learned of it from press reports. He was elected president in Nanjing that December.
Q 14Which 1,300-year-old system for choosing government officials did the Qing dynasty abolish in 1905?
Imperial examinations
Imperial examinations tested candidates on the Confucian classics. Answers had to follow the rigid 'eight-legged essay', built in eight set parts.
Q 15Which stage art took shape after Anhui troupes came to perform for the Qing emperor's birthday in 1790?
Peking opera
Peking opera grew from the Hui opera that four great troupes brought to the capital. Hubei troupes arrived in 1828 and performed alongside them.
Q 16Which English word for a Qing scholar-official came not from Chinese but from Portuguese?
Mandarin
Mandarin comes from the Portuguese mandarim. Missionaries later used it for the speech of those officials, which is how the language got the same name.
Q 17Which island did the Qing cede to Japan in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki after a humiliating defeat?
Taiwan
Taiwan stayed under Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945. Japan also won the Liaodong Peninsula, but three European powers soon pressed it into giving that up.
Q 18Which Italian director made The Last Emperor, the first Western feature shot inside the Forbidden City?
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci's film won all nine Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Q 19Which region did Qing armies enter in 1720 to expel Dzungar invaders, later posting officials called ambans there?
Tibet
Tibet stayed under Qing oversight until the dynasty fell in 1912. In the year its armies arrived, the Qing also installed the 7th Dalai Lama.
Q 20Priests of which Catholic order served the early Qing court as astronomers, calendar reformers and cannon-makers?
Jesuits
Jesuits such as Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest beat rival calendar scholars in a series of tests, after which the court adopted the Western calendar.
Dream of the Red Chamber first reached print in 1791, with 40 extra chapters added by its editors. The study of the book is a field of its own, known as Redology.
Q 24Which Japanese puppet state in northeast China put the deposed last Qing emperor back on a throne in 1934?
Manchukuo
Manchukuo was created in 1932, the year after Japan's army invaded the region, and it lasted until Japan's defeat in 1945.
Q 25Which European power signed the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, written in Latin to avoid translation disputes?
Russia
Russia had just been beaten at the siege of Albazin and gave up the land north of the Amur River. That border held until the mid-19th century.
Q 26Which vast region of steppe and oases did the Qing conquer in the 1750s after destroying the Dzungar Khanate?
Xinjiang
Xinjiang means 'new frontier'. It became a full province only in 1884, after the dynasty had lost the region to rebels and then won it back.
Q 27Which disease killed the Shunzhi Emperor at 22 and made the Qing court favour an heir who had already survived it?
Smallpox
Smallpox terrified the Manchus, who had no immunity to it. The young boy picked as heir carried its pockmarks on his face as an adult.
Q 28Which southern port was the only one where Western merchants could legally trade with Qing China from 1757 to 1842?
Canton
Canton funnelled all foreign trade through the Thirteen Factories on the Pearl River, where a licensed merchant monopoly called the Cohong handled every deal.
Q 29Which imperial residence was looted by British and French troops in 1860, then burned on Lord Elgin's orders?
Old Summer Palace
The Old Summer Palace was destroyed in reprisal for the torture of an Anglo-French delegation. Victor Hugo likened the two armies to robbers breaking into a museum.
Q 30Which Qing commissioner seized British merchants' opium in 1839 and destroyed it at Humen, provoking war?
Lin Zexu
Lin Zexu had 500 workers spend 23 days mixing the drug with lime and salt and flushing it out to sea. He also wrote an open letter urging Queen Victoria to end the trade.