Traditional Chinese Medicine
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50 free Traditional Chinese Medicine trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Traditional Chinese medicine is one of the oldest healing traditions still in daily use, and one of the most argued over. Its ideas about energy, balance and the body took shape more than two thousand years ago, and its needles, herbs and heat treatments now turn up in clinics on every continent. This quiz covers the whole field: the core concepts behind a diagnosis, the therapies and what they involve, the plants, minerals and animal parts in the pharmacy, the classic books and the healers credited with them, and the moments when Chinese remedies crossed into Western science, sport and politics. A few questions look at the safety and conservation problems the trade has caused. It suits curious beginners as much as students of acupuncture or herbalism, and works for a themed quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story behind each fact whether or not you get it right.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Chinese therapy left the round purple bruises seen on swimmer Michael Phelps's back at the 2016 Olympics?
Cupping
Cupping uses heated cups to create suction on the skin, an effect put down to the air inside cooling. Shaquille O'Neal and tennis player Ben Shelton have used it too.
Q 02Which Chinese invention, named huoyao or 'fire medicine', was first mixed by alchemists seeking an elixir of life?
Gunpowder
Gunpowder was originally developed by Taoists for medicinal purposes and was not used in warfare until around AD 904. Its sulfur and saltpeter were already familiar ingredients in Chinese remedies.
Q 03Chinese healers blew powdered scabs up patients' noses centuries before Edward Jenner to protect against which disease?
Smallpox
Smallpox scabs from mild cases were powdered and puffed up the nostril in the hope of a mild but protective infection. China has the oldest documented use of the technique, dating to the 16th century.
Q 04Yartsa gunbu, a fungus prized in traditional Chinese medicine, sprouts from the mummified body of which creature?
A caterpillar
A caterpillar of the ghost moth is infected on the Tibetan Plateau; the fungus kills and mummifies it, then sends up a stalk from the corpse. A pound of top-quality yartsa reached US$50,000 in 2012.
Q 05Tu Youyou won a 2015 Nobel Prize after a 1,600-year-old Chinese herbal recipe led her to a drug for which disease?
Malaria
Malaria drug artemisinin comes from sweet wormwood. Tu isolated it after reading a handbook written in 340 by Ge Hong, which said to steep the herb in cold water and so pointed her to a low-temperature extraction.
Q 06Which animal's hide is stewed into ejiao, a Chinese remedy so sought after that African countries have banned exports?
Donkey
Donkey numbers have fallen steeply as a result: Botswana's herd dropped 70% between 2011 and 2021. Uganda, Tanzania and Senegal are among the countries that banned exports to China.
Q 07Which 5,000-year-old Alpine mummy has tattoos at acupuncture points, made long before the practice arose in China?
Ötzi the Iceman
Ötzi the Iceman carries 61 tattoos, many at points where needles are placed for lower back and abdominal problems. He lived at least 2,000 years before acupuncture's earliest use in China.
Q 08Which drink do Chinese legends credit to Shennong, the mythical 'Divine Farmer' said to have tasted hundreds of herbs?
Tea
Tea, in the legend, dates from 2737 BC, and the story fits its early history: tea drinking may have begun in Yunnan, where the leaves were used for medicinal purposes.
Q 09Which animals are kept in cages on farms in China and Vietnam so their bile can be drained for traditional medicine?
Bears
Bears are the only mammals that produce significant amounts of ursodeoxycholic acid, the active ingredient in the bile. The giant panda is the exception: it makes none.
Q 10Which animal, thought to be the world's most trafficked mammal, is hunted so its armor can go into Chinese medicine?
Pangolin
The pangolin may account for as much as 20% of all illegal wildlife trade. It is the only mammal covered in large protective scales, the part the traffickers are after.
Q 11Which pair of opposites in Chinese medicine began as words for the shady and sunny sides of a hill?
Yin and yang
Yin and yang first named the shaded northern slope and the bright southern one. Chinese physicians apply the pair to the body too: the back and upper body count as yang, the lower body as yin.
Q 12Which of these completes the five phases of Chinese medicine, alongside wood, fire, earth and water?
Metal
Metal is born of earth in the generative cycle, as the ground yields minerals, and in turn gives rise to water. Wood here means the growth of trees more than timber itself.
Q 13In Chinese medicine, the word qi is usually translated as 'vital energy', but which of these does it literally mean?
Breath
Q 21Moxibustion, a heat therapy of Chinese medicine, burns which dried herb, ground to a fluff, on or near the skin?
Mugwort
Mugwort is aged, ground and often rolled into a cigar-shaped stick for the purpose. Practitioners claim its heat drives out cold and dampness and can even help turn breech babies.
Q 22Which Chinese therapy, known in English as 'spooning' or 'coining', strokes the skin until red marks appear?
Gua sha
Gua sha joins the Chinese for 'to scrape' with a word for the bruise-like marks left behind. Ceramic spoons, coins, jade stones and water buffalo horn all serve as tools.
Q 23Which red berry, used in Chinese medicine and grown mainly in Ningxia and Xinjiang, is also called the wolfberry?
Goji
Breath, air or vapor is the literal meaning of qi. The traditional character contains the sign for rice, a hint at the steam that rises from it.
Q 14What are the channels called along which qi is said to flow, linking the acupuncture points of Chinese medicine?
Meridians
Meridians are said to include twelve principal channels tied to the organs, plus eight 'extraordinary vessels'. Scientists have found no evidence that any of them exist.
Q 15Which body part does a Chinese medicine practitioner inspect for its color, shape and coating as a guide to the organs?
The tongue
The tongue of a healthy person, in this system, is pale red or pink with a thin white coat. Practitioners also note its moisture, its cracks and any teeth marks.
Q 16Where on the body does a Chinese medicine practitioner feel the pulse at three positions known as cun, guan and chi?
The wrist
The wrist gives three positions on each arm, named inch, gate and foot, all felt along the radial artery. The first lies closest to the hand and the third furthest from it.
Q 17Which root, prized as a tonic in Chinese medicine, has a name whose first syllable is the Chinese word for 'person'?
Ginseng
Ginseng comes from the Chinese renshen; the second character is used for a forked plant root. Wild plants take years to mature and are being dug up faster than they can reproduce.
Q 18Which camphor-and-menthol ointment grew out of a remedy devised by a Chinese herbalist in 1870s Rangoon, Burma?
Tiger Balm
Tiger Balm began as Ban Kin Yu, 'Ten Thousand Golden Oil'. Herbalist Aw Chu Kin asked his sons on his deathbed to perfect it, and in 1918 it was renamed to give it broader appeal.
Q 19Which US president's delegation to China watched surgery on an awake patient said to be numbed by acupuncture alone?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon made the trip in 1972. It later emerged that such showcase patients were picked for their high pain tolerance and often received morphine secretly through an intravenous drip.
Q 20Which Chinese leader backed traditional medicine in 1950 although, by his own physician's account, he never used it?
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong did not personally believe in it, his physician Li Zhisui recalled. His government nonetheless revived traditional medicine, legalized previously banned practices and sponsored its integration with Western care.
Goji grows on a boxthorn shrub in the nightshade family, the group that also contains tomatoes, potatoes and peppers. Nobody knows where the English name wolfberry came from.
Q 24Which 'living fossil' tree, used in Chinese medicine since the 11th century, has leaves now sold as a memory supplement?
Ginkgo
Ginkgo owes its Western spelling to a centuries-old transcription error of its older name. Trials show little benefit from the supplements, except possibly in dementia.
Q 25Which small fish, sold dried in Chinese medicine shops for impotence and wheezing, has the scientific name Hippocampus?
Seahorse
The seahorse is widely taken despite a lack of clinical trials, and is also used for pain and to induce labor. In the living animal it is the male that carries the eggs, up to 1,500 at a time.
Q 26Rhino horn, prescribed in Chinese medicine for fevers and convulsions, is made of which protein?
Keratin
Keratin is also the stuff of hair and fingernails, so the remedy has been compared to drinking nail clippings in water. The idea that China takes the horn as an aphrodisiac is a common misconception.
Q 27Acupressure bands sold to travelers press on P6, an acupuncture point of Chinese medicine, to relieve which symptom?
Nausea
Nausea after surgery was reduced by stimulating P6 in a Cochrane review, though it rated the evidence as low in quality. P6 is one of the most thoroughly investigated acupuncture points of all.
Q 28Kampo, adapted from Chinese medicine since the 7th century, is the traditional herbal medicine of which country?
Japan
Japan owes it to its Buddhist clergy, who for centuries carried Chinese medical knowledge home and treated both the elite and the general population. Kampo also took up acupuncture and moxibustion.
Q 29What were the farmers called who, after basic training, took modern and Chinese medicine to villages from 1968?
Barefoot doctors
Barefoot doctors took the name from southern farmers who worked shoeless in the rice paddies while also practicing medicine. Some were folk healers or recent school leavers.
Q 30Which legendary ruler lends his name to the Neijing, the 'Inner Canon' treated as the founding text of Chinese medicine?
The Yellow Emperor
The Yellow Emperor appears in it questioning six of his ministers, across two books of eighty-one chapters each. It has been a core source of doctrine for more than two millennia.