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60 free Mao Zedong trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Mao Zedong trivia quiz follows the founder of the People's Republic of China from a farm in Hunan to the mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. The easy questions cover the basics: the province he came from, the party he helped found, the epic retreat that made him its leader, the date he proclaimed the People's Republic, the little book everyone carried and the man who eventually took China in the opposite direction. From there it moves through his teenage arranged marriage, the pigtail he cut off in protest, his six months as a private soldier, the library job in Beijing that introduced him to Marxism, and the boat on South Lake where the first party congress hid from the police. The harder end covers the Autumn Harvest Uprising, Jinggangshan, the Futian incident, the Zunyi conference, the grasslands, Yan'an and Edgar Snow, the Xi'an Incident, the Hundred Regiments Offensive, land reform, the Korean War, the Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap Forward and the famine, Lushan, the Sino-Soviet split, the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao's plane crash, his four wives and the '70 percent right' verdict. Every answer was checked against Mao's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our China and Joseph Stalin quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Chinese province was Mao born in 1893?
Hunan
He grew up near Shaoshan village and kept a marked Hunanese accent all his life.
Q 02What was Mao's father, Mao Yichang?
A poor peasant turned wealthy farmer
Mao described him as a stern disciplinarian who beat his children.
Q 03How old was Mao when his father put him into an arranged marriage with the 17-year-old Luo Yixiu?
13
He refused to recognise her as his wife and became a fierce critic of arranged marriage.
Q 04Which two classic novels did the young Mao prefer to the Confucian texts he was made to study?
Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin
He also read translations of Adam Smith, Rousseau and Darwin on his father's farm.
Q 05What did Mao and a friend cut off in 1911 as a symbol of rebellion against the Manchu monarchy?
Their queue pigtails
The queue was a sign of subservience to the emperor.
Q 06How long did Mao serve as a private soldier in the rebel army during the Xinhai Revolution?
Six months
He never saw combat and resigned in 1912 once the monarchy was abolished.
Q 07Which of these schools did the young Mao NOT enrol in and drop out of, according to his biography?
A medical school
He also tried an economics school and Changsha Middle School before deciding to become a teacher.
Q 08Mao's first published article, in New Youth in April 1917, urged readers to do what?
Increase their physical strength
He was a keen advocate of physical endurance and went on begging walking tours of Hunan with a friend.
Q 09What job did Mao take at Peking University in 1918 that introduced him to Marxism?
Assistant to the librarian
The librarian, Li Dazhao, was writing articles on the October Revolution; other students snubbed Mao for his accent.
Q 10Why, perhaps, did Mao decline to join his friends on the work-study programme in France?
An inability to learn languages
He raised funds for the movement anyway; his spoken English never got beyond a few phrases.
Q 11How did Mao describe Woodrow Wilson after Versailles let Japan keep Germany's possessions in Shandong?
'An ant on a hot skillet'
The May Fourth protests of 1919 grew out of that betrayal.
Q 12What manual job did Mao do in Shanghai in 1920 while meeting Chen Duxiu?
Laundryman
Chen's adoption of Marxism 'deeply impressed' him at what he called a critical period in his life.
Q 13How many delegates, Mao among them, attended the first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921?
13
When a police spy turned up, they moved to a boat on South Lake near Jiaxing to finish the meeting.
Q 21How large was the force that broke out of the Jiangxi Soviet to begin the Long March in October 1934?
85,000 troops and 15,000 cadres
Only 7,000 to 8,000 reached Shaanxi a year later.
Q 22At which January 1935 conference was Mao elected Chairman of the Politburo?
Zunyi
His candidacy was backed by Stalin; he set the destination as the Shaanxi soviet in the north.
Q 23Which crossing of the Tatu River did the Red Army fight for in May 1935 during the Long March?
The Luding Bridge
After that came the grasslands, a quagmire where many died of famine and disease.
Q 14Why did Mao claim to have missed the party's Second Congress in Shanghai in July 1922?
He lost the address
The congress agreed an alliance with the Kuomintang, which Mao enthusiastically backed.
Q 15Which body did Mao run in Guangzhou from May to September 1926?
The KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute
His time in Shaoshan in 1924 had convinced him of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry.
Q 16Which failed revolt did Mao lead against Changsha in September 1927 before retreating to the Jinggang Mountains?
The Autumn Harvest Uprising
On its eve he wrote 'Changsha', the earliest of his poems to survive; the Fourth Regiment deserted to the KMT.
Q 17How did the Central Committee punish Mao in 1927 for his 'military opportunism' and rural focus?
It expelled him from its ranks
He ignored them and built a base of five villages at Jinggangshan.
Q 18Which general's forces did Mao's troops unite with in 1928 to become the core of the Red Army?
Zhu De's
A Fifth Red Army under another commander joined them later that year at Jinggangshan.
Q 19What happened to Mao's second wife, Yang Kaihui, in November 1930?
She was captured and beheaded by a KMT general
His sister was executed at the same time; He Zizhen, whom he had married in 1928, was already his partner.
Q 20How many dissenters did Mao's loyalists execute during the Futian incident of December 1930?
Two to three thousand
Members of the Jiangxi Soviet had accused Mao of being too moderate and tried to overthrow him.
Q 24Which American journalist wrote Red Star Over China, publicising Mao's base in the late 1930s?
Edgar Snow
Agnes Smedley also visited the 'Border Region' and wrote about it.
Q 25Which general arrested Chiang Kai-shek in the 1936 Xi'an Incident, forcing a united front with the Communists?
Zhang Xueliang
Mao had proposed an alliance against Japan weeks earlier, a course Stalin favoured.
Q 26Which Shanghai actress did Mao marry after divorcing He Zizhen, who was sent to Moscow for treatment?
Jiang Qing
Born Li Shumeng, she had been married twice before; she later led the Gang of Four.
Q 27How many troops joined the Red Army's Hundred Regiments Offensive against Japan in August 1940?
400,000
It killed 20,000 Japanese and disrupted railways across five provinces.
Q 28What was the name of the US envoy group sent to the Chinese Communists in 1944?
The Dixie Mission
Its soldiers found the party less corrupt and more vigorous against Japan than the KMT, but little came of it.
Q 29On what date did Mao proclaim the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen?
1 October 1949
Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan that December; Mao spent the winter in Moscow negotiating with Stalin.
Q 30Which city did the PLA starve out in a 1948 siege that a PLA officer later compared to Hiroshima?
Changchun
At least 160,000 civilians are believed to have died between June and October.