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50 free Great Wall of China trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Great Wall of China is not one wall but thousands of sections built over more than two thousand years, and this quiz covers the whole story. It starts with the Warring States walls and the First Emperor's general Meng Tian, moves through the Han, Northern Qi and Sui, and spends plenty of time on the brick-and-stone Ming wall that tourists actually visit: Badaling, Mutianyu, Jinshanling, Jiayu Pass in the west and the Old Dragon's Head where the wall meets the sea. Along the way you will meet the 2012 survey that finally measured the wall at 21,196 km, the sticky-rice mortar that holds the bricks together, the legend of Lady Meng Jiang, the general who opened the gates to the Manchus in 1644, the 1899 Denver newspaper hoax and the astronaut who could not see the wall from orbit. Difficulty runs from easy questions any traveller can answer to expert ones on dynasties, dates and passes. Every answer was verified against Wikipedia's articles on the Great Wall, its history and its individual sections, and each question carries a citation. If you enjoy it, try our China and Ancient Wonders of the World quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to China's 2012 survey, what is the total length of all Great Wall sections and trenches?
21,196 km
The Ming wall alone measures 8,850 km, of which 2,232 km is natural barrier such as hills and rivers.
Q 02The Great Wall was built mainly to protect against nomadic groups from which region?
The Eurasian Steppe
Its other jobs included border control, collecting duties on Silk Road goods and regulating trade.
Q 03In which century BC do the first walls date from?
The 7th
They were joined together under the Qin dynasty in the 3rd century BC.
Q 04Which dynasty built the best-known brick-and-stone sections of the wall?
The Ming
It ruled from 1368 to 1644 and is estimated to have built up to 25,000 watchtowers.
Q 05The Chinese name Wanli Changcheng literally means what?
Ten-Thousand Mile Long Wall
"Ten thousand" is figurative here, meaning innumerable, much like the English word myriad.
Q 06Which poetic nickname for the wall appears in Chinese sources alongside "the Earth Dragon"?
The Purple Frontier
After the Qin, later dynasties avoided the term "Long Wall" because of its link to the First Emperor's tyranny.
Q 07Sections of wall in the Gobi and Mongolian steppe are sometimes misleadingly named after which conqueror?
Genghis Khan
He never built any walls or permanent defence lines himself.
Q 08Which general did the First Emperor send to build walls linking the Qin, Zhao and Yan walls?
Meng Tian
Before his forced suicide in 210 BC he lamented that his walls must have "broken the earth's veins".
Q 09What guiding principle of Qin wall-building implied the frontier was never meant to be permanent?
"Build and move on"
Builders used stone in the mountains and rammed earth on the plains, whatever was local.
Q 10The Great Wall of Qi is the oldest surviving Great Wall; bamboo records date its start to when?
441 BC
The date comes from the Tsinghua bamboo strips, acquired by the university in 2008.
Q 11Which dynasty mobilised over a million men for wall-building?
The Sui
The Tang and Song dynasties largely ignored the frontier walls.
Q 12The Ming turned to serious wall-building after which 1449 disaster, in which the emperor was captured?
The Tumu Crisis
Over half of the campaigning Chinese army perished and the Ming were on the defensive from then on.
Q 13Which Ming general oversaw 1,200 watchtowers built between Shanhai Pass and Changping from 1567 to 1570?
Qi Jiguang
Under his supervision, sections of rammed-earth wall near Beijing were faced with bricks.
Q 21Shanhaiguan, the traditional eastern end of the wall, carries what grand title?
First Pass Under Heaven
It sits at the edge of the Bohai Gulf, roughly 300 km east of Beijing.
Q 22The stretch of wall that runs into the sea at Shanhai Pass is nicknamed what?
Old Dragon's Head
Nearby Jiumenkou is the only part of the wall built as a bridge.
Q 23Which section near Zhangjiakou was the first opened to the public in the People's Republic and is the most visited?
Badaling
It saw nearly 10 million visitors in 2018, prompting a daily cap of 65,000 the next year.
Q 14Through which lightly held point did Altan Khan pass in 1550 to raid the suburbs of Beijing?
Gubeikou
One contemporary source says the raid took more than 60,000 lives; the Ming then closed every gap around the capital.
Q 15Who opened the gates of Shanhai Pass to the Manchus in 1644?
Wu Sangui
He hoped the Manchus would help him expel the rebels who had taken Beijing; instead they took the empire.
Q 16Why did the Qing dynasty stop maintaining the Great Wall as a border defence?
Their empire now extended beyond it
They did build the Willow Palisade, meant to keep Han Chinese out of Manchuria.
Q 17Which famous 13th-century European visitor to China never mentioned the Great Wall in his account?
Marco Polo
Ibn Battuta had heard of it around 1346 but could find no one who had actually seen it.
Q 18From which country did Jesuit Bento de Góis travel overland to enter China through the Great Wall in 1605?
India
He reached the wall's far north-western pass after crossing Central Asia.
Q 19Which fortress in Gansu province marks the western end of the Ming Great Wall?
Jiayu Pass
Its fortress was built around 1372 and strengthened over fears of an invasion by Timur, who died on the way.
Q 20Legend says the designer of the wall's western fortress calculated he needed how many bricks?
99,999
Challenged, he added one more; the single leftover brick is said to still sit loose on one of the gates.
Q 24In what year did the first restored section of the wall open to tourism under the People's Republic?
1957
It followed scholar Guo Moruo's 1952 proposal, the first modern plan to repair the wall.
Q 25Which US president visited the wall on 24 February 1972 during his historic trip to China?
Richard Nixon
Later visitors included Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Q 26The Mutianyu section was first built in the mid-6th century under which dynasty?
Northern Qi
That makes it older than the more famous section to its west; the present wall was rebuilt in 1569.
Q 27How many watchtowers stand on the 2,250-metre Mutianyu stretch?
22
Its pass has a rare structure of three connected watchtowers standing on one terrace.
Q 28Wangjing Lou, one of Jinshanling's 67 watchtowers, stands at what elevation?
980 m
The Jinshanling section runs 11 km and climbs some extremely steep slopes.
Q 29Which mortar was extensively used to hold the Ming wall's bricks together?
Sticky rice and slaked lime
No human bones were ever built into the wall, whatever the urban legend says.
Q 30How were signals sent between garrisons along the wall?
Smoke or fire from towers
Signal towers were built on hilltops for visibility so reinforcements could be summoned quickly.