Yangtze Trivia
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56 free Yangtze trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Yangtze trivia quiz covers the Long River from its source on the Tibetan Plateau to the delta that produces a fifth of China's GDP. It starts with the basics (how long it is, where it rises and ends, what its Chinese name means and where the English name came from) and works through the Three Gorges, the world's largest power station and the million-plus people it displaced, the extinct baiji and paddlefish, the alligator and the giant salamander, and the ten-year fishing ban. The second half is history and cities: the fire ships at Red Cliffs, the deadliest floods in history, Mao's propaganda swims, the first bridges at Wuhan and Nanjing, Chongqing's years as wartime capital, the Yellow Crane Tower, Poyang and Dongting lakes, the Grand Canal and the South-North Water Transfer. About a third of the questions are easy; the rest are for geography teachers and anyone who has taken the Three Gorges cruise. Try our China and rivers of the world quizzes next. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Yangtze, the Three Gorges Dam and the river's wildlife, cities and history, and each explanation adds one more detail.
30 of 56 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Besides the Nile, which river is longer than the Yangtze?
The Amazon
The Amazon is the other one, and whether it or the Nile is really the world's longest river is still disputed.
Q 02What does the Chinese name Chang Jiang literally mean?
Long River
Long River is the name used in China, while it was mainly Westerners who applied 'Yangtze' to the whole river.
Q 03Where does the Yangtze rise?
The Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau
The Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau hold its headstreams, and accounts differ over whether the Ulan Moron or the Dangqu is where it truly begins.
Q 04Into which sea does the Yangtze empty?
The East China Sea
The East China Sea receives it, and the silt the river carries down from upstream built Chongming, the big island sitting in its mouth.
Q 05In 1937, aircraft from which country sank the US gunboat Panay on the Yangtze?
Japan
Japan's government accepted responsibility but called the attack unintentional, then paid a large indemnity, which helped keep the incident from escalating.
Q 06What does Jinsha, the name of the upper Yangtze from Yibin to Qinghai, mean?
Gold Sands
Gold Sands is the meaning, and prospectors have long panned real gold from the river's waters.
Q 07Which famous canyon does the Jinsha stretch of the upper Yangtze pass through?
Tiger Leaping Gorge
Tiger Leaping Gorge is where, legend says, a hunted tiger escaped by leaping across the river from a rock in midstream.
Q 08What are the names of the Three Gorges, from west to east?
Qutang, Wu and Xiling
Qutang, Wu and Xiling is the order; Qutang is the shortest, and teams of men once hauled boats upstream through the gorges on ropes.
Q 09As of 2025, which world record does the Three Gorges Dam hold?
World's largest power station by capacity
World's largest power station by capacity is its record, yet its reservoir has been blamed for more landslides and earthquakes in the region.
Q 10Which Chinese leader envisioned a great dam across the Yangtze's gorges in a 1919 book?
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen floated the idea, and when the reservoir finally filled, the higher water made the gorges' famous cliffs look noticeably lower.
Q 11Besides its staircase locks, what carries boats of up to 3,000 tons past the Three Gorges Dam?
A ship lift
A ship lift raises boats like an elevator, so smaller vessels can skip the five-stage locks, which take hours to pass through.
Q 12Roughly how many people were displaced by the Three Gorges reservoir?
1.1 to 1.4 million
1.1 to 1.4 million people had to move, and the rising water also drowned countless archaeological sites along the gorges.
Q 13The steel used in the Three Gorges Dam would be enough to build how many Eiffel Towers?
63
63 towers' worth of steel went in, and the dam's deep reservoir now lets oceangoing ships sail through the gorges to a port some 1,400 miles inland.
Q 21Which critically endangered Yangtze-basin amphibian is widely farmed in China?
Chinese giant salamander
The Chinese giant salamander is prized as a delicacy and in traditional medicine, yet farms still take wild animals, so poaching goes on.
Q 22In 2020, China began a ten-year ban on what in key stretches of the Yangtze?
Fishing
Fishing stopped so depleted stocks could recover, and fishermen had to find new livelihoods with state support.
Q 23Which famous aviator surveyed China's catastrophic 1931 Yangtze floods from the air?
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh flew the survey with his wife Anne, but their plane capsized in the Yangtze as it was being lowered from a British carrier.
Q 14In 2020, the Three Gorges Dam broke which dam's annual power output record?
Itaipu Dam
Itaipu Dam, on the Brazil–Paraguay border, had set the mark in 2016, and it was heavy monsoon rain that pushed the Three Gorges past it.
Q 15A NASA scientist calculated that filling the Three Gorges reservoir would slightly slow what?
Earth's rotation
Earth's rotation slows because the raised water shifts mass away from the planet's axis, like a skater stretching out their arms, but the day grows by only 0.06 microseconds.
Q 16Which huge Buddha statue sits above a Yangtze tributary where many boats had once been wrecked?
The Leshan Giant Buddha
The Leshan Giant Buddha was begun by a monk to protect boatmen, and the rock cut away while carving it is said to have filled the riverbed and made the water safer.
Q 17Which Yangtze river dolphin was declared functionally extinct after a 2006 survey found none?
The baiji
The baiji was the last of its whole family of river dolphins, so that entire family has probably vanished with it.
Q 18Which Yangtze fish, last seen alive in 2003, was declared extinct in a 2019 study?
The Chinese paddlefish
The Chinese paddlefish could no longer reach its upriver spawning grounds once dams blocked its migration.
Q 19The Yangtze giant softshell, one of the rarest animals alive, is what kind of creature?
A turtle
A turtle: in 2019 the only female then known died at a Chinese zoo, shortly after vets tried once more to inseminate her artificially and save the species.
Q 20The Chinese alligator, historically called the 'muddy dragon', survives in the wild in which province?
Anhui
Anhui is where it clings on, and in summer it feeds at night, a habit put down to avoiding both people and the heat.
Q 24After the 1998 Yangtze floods, experts blamed much of the flooding on what upstream?
Logging
Logging had cleared forest in the upper basin, and the floods convinced China to restore tree cover there.
Q 25The Battle of Red Cliffs on the Yangtze in 208-209 AD saw the defeat of which northern warlord?
Cao Cao
Cao Cao had chained his ships together, possibly against seasickness, so when Huang Gai faked a defection and sent fire ships in, the fleet burned.
Q 26Which wine-loving Tang poet wrote of speeding down the Yangtze gorges from White Emperor City in a day?
Li Bai
Li Bai is thought to have written it after a pardon reached him on his way upriver into exile, which explains the joyful dash back downstream.
Q 27The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, opened in 1968, was the first to cross which part of the river?
The lower reaches
The lower reaches had no bridge before this one, which joined a railway the river had split for decades.
Q 28Which leader took staged swims in the Yangtze at Wuhan in 1956 and 1966 to show off his health?
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong wanted the masses to take up swimming too, and party propaganda turned his river swims into a nationwide craze.
Q 29In 1911, a mutiny at Wuchang, now part of Wuhan, began the revolution that overthrew which dynasty?
The Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty fell after a revolutionary plot was uncovered, pushing Wuchang's troops to mutiny, and city after city then declared against it.
Q 30Which landmark on the Wuchang bank of the Yangtze was first built in AD 223 for Sun Quan?
Yellow Crane Tower
Yellow Crane Tower has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, and the tower standing today only went up in the 1980s.