Xia Dynasty
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Xia Dynasty trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Xia is where traditional Chinese history begins: a line of kings said to have ruled some four thousand years ago, founded by a hero who tamed catastrophic floods. No record from the time survives, so every fact about the Xia sits somewhere between history, legend and an argument still running among archaeologists. That uncertainty is what makes it such good trivia. This quiz collects the fun facts people most often go looking for. You will meet Yu the Great and his years of flood work, the rulers who followed him, a usurpation and a comeback, and the tyrant whose excesses ended it all. Other questions cover the ancient books that describe the dynasty and the modern digs and dating work that test those stories. It is pitched for curious beginners as much as history students: the opening questions are the famous stories, and the later ones reward anyone who has read a little further. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than you started with.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the last Xia king reportedly fill a lake with, big enough to float boats?
Wine
Wine filled the lake, and legend says three thousand men drank from it at the beat of a drum. Many reportedly fell in drunk and drowned.
Q 02What did Yu the Great reportedly refuse to do three times during his thirteen years fighting floods?
Enter his own home
Yu passed his door but would not enter his own home, even when he heard his wife was in labour. In one telling, the son he had never met was more than ten years old by the third pass.
Q 03Which ruling house, the first to leave written records in China, traditionally overthrew the Xia?
Shang dynasty
The Shang dynasty followed the Xia in traditional history and is the earliest firmly supported by archaeological evidence. Some histories of China therefore begin with it instead.
Q 04Which mythical creatures was the Xia king Kong Jia reportedly given, hiring keepers to raise them?
Dragons
Dragons, a pair of them, were said to be a divine gift, but one died in its keeper's care. The keeper served it to the king as a meal, then fled when the truth came out.
Q 05Yu the Great won fame taming the floods of which waterway, the second-longest in China?
Yellow River
The Yellow River carries so much fine silt that its bed keeps rising, which made its floods a constant threat. That mix of gift and menace earned it the nicknames China's Pride and China's Sorrow.
Q 06Which sky event did the Xia king Zhong Kang's astronomers, said to be drunk, fail to predict?
A solar eclipse
A solar eclipse caught the court off guard and caused panic among the common people. Zhong Kang sent a nobleman to punish the astronomers for neglecting their duties.
Q 07Yu the Great set the pattern for Chinese dynasties by letting the Xia throne pass to which relative?
His son
His son Qi took the throne, ending the older custom of handing power to the most capable candidate. Yu had reportedly picked a minister as heir, but the lords backed Qi instead.
Q 08Which emperor travelled to honour Yu the Great at his reputed tomb in the last year of his reign?
Qin Shi Huang
Qin Shi Huang, the emperor buried with a terracotta army, climbed the mountain and sacrificed to the spirit of Yu. Later emperors kept up the custom of performing ceremonies there.
Q 09Which metal did workshops at the site most often linked to the Xia pioneer casting into ritual vessels?
Bronze
Bronze was cast there in piece-moulds, a technique the city's workshops pioneered. The plain around it has no copper of its own, so the ore had to be brought in from elsewhere.
Q 10The Xia are never mentioned on which objects, which carry the oldest known body of Chinese writing?
Oracle bones
Oracle bones were ox shoulder blades and turtle shells that diviners heated until they cracked, then inscribed. They date from centuries after the Xia supposedly fell, and none names it.
Q 11How did Yu the Great finally tame the floods after his father's dams and dikes had failed?
Digging drainage channels
Digging drainage channels let the water run off to the sea instead of piling up behind walls. Yu is said to have eaten and slept alongside the common workers throughout.
Q 12Yu the Great is believed to have grown up on which sacred mountain, where the Shaolin Temple now stands?
Mount Song
Mount Song is the central peak of China's Five Great Mountains. Yu's father held a fief there, so the future flood-tamer is thought to have spent his boyhood on its slopes.
Q 13Which stone was carved into the huge sculpture 'King Yu Tamed the Flood' kept at Beijing's Palace Museum?
Jade
Q 21Which tyrant, the last Xia ruler, is said to have ridden on a minister's back as if on a horse?
King Jie
King Jie had the exhausted minister dragged out and executed when he could crawl no further, the story goes. Tradition remembers him as the oppressor who brought about the collapse of his own dynasty.
Q 22Which sage ruler, counted last of the legendary Five Emperors, handed power to Yu the Great?
Emperor Shun
Emperor Shun passed over his own heir because Yu's flood work had impressed him so much. Yu is said to have declined at first, then accepted because the other lords and chiefs wanted him.
Q 23The father of Yu the Great was named Gun, a word that literally means what kind of creature?
Big fish
Jade carving is a prized craft of Yangzhou, and the city counts this piece among its classics. Its workshops trace their tradition back more than five thousand years.
Q 14Which idea did the early Zhou kings use to explain both their own conquest and the earlier fall of the Xia?
Mandate of Heaven
Mandate of Heaven doctrine held that a ruler who governed badly lost the divine right to rule. By saying the Xia had lost it first, the Zhou gave their own rebellion a precedent.
Q 15The limp Yu the Great supposedly got from his labours inspired a ritual dance step in which religion?
Taoism
Taoism calls it the Pace of Yu, a step in which the dancer drags one foot after the other. Legend says the flood work left Yu lame on one side of his body.
Q 16Which pastime kept the Xia king Tai Kang away from his capital long enough for a rival to seize it?
Hunting
Hunting beyond the Luo River was Tai Kang's passion, and he neglected his rule for it. His five younger brothers are said to have composed laments for the lost kingdom.
Q 17Which laboratory method dates the site most often linked to the Xia to about 1750–1530 BC?
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating at first gave wide ranges that sat neatly with the traditional Xia dates. Sharper measurements later narrowed the span to start centuries after the dynasty's supposed founding.
Q 18Why did Yu the Great reportedly execute the chieftain Fangfeng at a grand assembly after the floods?
He arrived late
He arrived late, and later tellings add a bitter twist: Fangfeng had stopped on the way to fight a local flood. Modern versions of the legend stress that he was wrongly put to death.
Q 19Yu the Great is said to have ridden carriages on land and boats on rivers, but what across mud?
Sleds
Sleds carried Yu over the mudflats while he surveyed the land. The same account credits him with opening roads that linked all his provinces.
Q 20Which site, discovered in central China in 1959, do most Chinese archaeologists identify with the Xia?
Erlitou
Erlitou was at first taken for a capital of the dynasty that came after the Xia. Many Western scholars still call the Xia link unprovable, since the old accounts offer so little that can be tested.
Big fish is the literal meaning, fitting for a man whose life was ruled by water. His dykes collapsed, and he ended his days on Feather Mountain, executed or exiled depending on the account.
Q 24What is Yu the Great said to have cast from metal sent as tribute by each of his provinces?
Tripod cauldrons
Tripod cauldrons, nine in all, came to symbolise the authority of whichever dynasty held them. They passed from one royal house to the next before vanishing, lost in a river by one account.
Q 25Which Han dynasty historian listed seventeen Xia kings in his Records of the Grand Historian?
Sima Qian
Sima Qian wrote some two thousand years after the Xia supposedly began. His list of the next dynasty's kings was later borne out by excavated inscriptions, but no such proof has turned up for his Xia kings.
Q 26Which chronicle, buried in a king's tomb for nearly six centuries, dates the Xia from 1989 to 1558 BC?
Bamboo Annals
Bamboo Annals takes its name from the slips it was written on, recovered in the 3rd century AD from the grave of a king of Wei. Its Xia dates start about two centuries later than the traditional ones.
Q 27Which legendary archer, famed for shooting down nine suns, reportedly seized the Xia capital from Tai Kang?
Hou Yi
Hou Yi is better known in myth as the husband of the moon goddess Chang'e. In the chronicles he appears as a tribal leader who was later killed by his own former chief minister.
Q 28Which rebel leader overthrew the last Xia ruler, then gave the surviving royal clan a small state to rule?
King Tang
King Tang is said to have won over many smaller kingdoms before he struck. In a famous speech he claimed he had no wish to cause chaos but had to act against the tyrant's terror.
Q 29Xiangliu, the nine-headed monster that Yu the Great reportedly killed, took the form of which animal?
A snake
A snake with nine heads, Xiangliu was so gluttonous that every head fed at the same meal. The venomous monster was blamed for bringing floods and destruction.
Q 30Near which Zhejiang city, once called Kuaiji, does the mausoleum of Yu the Great stand?
Shaoxing
Shaoxing lies north of the Kuaiji Mountains, where Yu is said to have died while touring the eastern edge of his realm. The present mausoleum site dates to the 6th century.