Q 01/05

Zhuang Zhou woke from a dream unsure whether he was a man or which creature now dreaming that it was him?

A) A butterfly

B) A carp

C) A sparrow

D) A tiger

Answer · why

A) A butterfly

A butterfly 'flitting and fluttering about' is the image Zhuangzi used to ask whether waking life is any more real than a dream. The parable sits in t...

Q 02/05

Zhao Gao, the Qin eunuch, tested which courtiers dared contradict him by calling what animal a horse in open court?

A) A camel

B) A deer

C) An ox

D) A donkey

Answer · why

B) A deer

A deer paraded as a horse gave Chinese the idiom 'point at a deer and call it a horse', meaning a brazen lie nobody dares challenge. Zhao Gao later as...

Q 03/05

After the First Emperor died on tour in 210 BC, his chancellor masked the smell of the corpse with carts of what?

A) Burning incense

B) Fresh flowers

C) Rotten fish

D) Live pigs

Answer · why

C) Rotten fish

Rotten fish was carted before and behind the emperor's wagon so the court would not learn he was dead before the succession was fixed. The secrecy let...

Q 04/05

In Zhang Heng's 132 AD earthquake detector, a bronze ball fell from a dragon's jaws into the mouth of which animal?

A) A tortoise

B) A crane

C) A lion

D) A toad

Answer · why

D) A toad

A toad sat beneath each of the eight dragon heads, and the one that caught the ball pointed to the quake's direction. The device once reported a tremo...

Q 05/05

The Records of the Grand Historian's entry for 240 BC is the earliest certain sighting of which comet?

A) Encke's

B) Halley's

C) Hale-Bopp

D) Swift-Tuttle

Answer · why

B) Halley's

Halley's Comet returns about every 76 years, so the 240 BC Chinese record is the first of many apparitions logged in Chinese chronicles. Court astrono...