Chinese cities, found on the map

Forty-four dots and no labels: every provincial capital, the big ports, and the Silk Road towns out west that the population alone would have left off. The provinces are gone from this map, so all you have to go on is the coastline, the borders and the rivers.

44 to find, 8 a run.

6 rounds, 6 of 8 to pass each. Pass one and its places are yours.

⚔️ Challenge someone to Chinese cities

Get to know Shenzhen before you go.

Explore Shenzhen through two interactive maps, fifteen sights and a ten-section course.

Explore Shenzhen →

Get to know Hong Kong before you go.

Explore Hong Kong through two interactive maps, fifteen sights and a ten-section course.

Explore Hong Kong →

Get to know Macau before you go.

Explore Macau through two interactive maps, fifteen sights and a ten-section course.

Explore Macau →

Get to know Beijing before you go.

Explore Beijing through two interactive maps, fifteen sights and a ten-section course.

Explore Beijing →

Get to know Shanghai before you go.

Explore Shanghai through two interactive maps, fifteen sights and a ten-section course.

Explore Shanghai →

44 cities · 5 regions

What the map tells you about each one

The paragraph the game shows when you find a place, for the 17 of the 44 that have one. Reading them first is not cheating.

North and Northeast China10 on the map

Beijing: Beijing has around 21 million people. It was laid out on a north to south axis that still runs about 8 kilometers through the middle of the city, from the Bell Tower down through the Forbidden City to Yongdingmen, and the Olympic park of 2008 was built as an extension of that same line northward.
Dalian: Dalian sits at the end of the Liaodong Peninsula, guarding the entrance to the Bohai Sea, which is why Russia and then Japan took so much trouble over it between 1898 and 1945. Its ice-free harbor is the northernmost on the Chinese coast that stays open all winter.
Harbin: Harbin grew from a village after Russia built the Chinese Eastern Railway through it in 1898, and the onion domes of St. Sophia are left from that. Winter temperatures fall to around minus 25 degrees Celsius, cold enough that the ice festival cuts blocks from the frozen Songhua and builds full-size buildings out of them.

Also on the mapChangchun · Datong · Hohhot · Shenyang · Shijiazhuang · Taiyuan · Tianjin

East China10 on the map

Qingdao: Qingdao was leased to Germany from 1898 to 1914, which is why the old quarter has German villas and why the brewery founded in 1903 is still the second largest in the country. The port is one of the busiest in the world and the sailing events of the 2008 Olympics were held here.
Shanghai: Shanghai is the most populous city in the country, with about 24 million people, and its port has been the busiest in the world by container volume since 2010. The name means upon the sea. The Pudong side, all towers now, was farmland and warehouses until it was opened for development in 1990.

Also on the mapFuzhou · Hangzhou · Hefei · Jinan · Nanchang · Nanjing · Ningbo · Xiamen

Central and South China11 on the map

Guangzhou: Guangzhou, long known in English as Canton, was for centuries the only port where foreigners were allowed to trade with China, under the system that ran from 1757 until the First Opium War. The Canton Fair, held twice a year since 1957, is the largest trade fair in the country.
Sanya: Sanya is at 18 degrees north, roughly the latitude of Hawaii, and is the only genuinely tropical resort city in the country. It was a place of exile for disgraced officials for most of imperial history, which is why a rock on the shore is inscribed with characters meaning the edge of the sky.
Shenzhen: Shenzhen was a county of a few hundred thousand people when it was made the first special economic zone in 1980. It now has over 12 million and produces a large share of the world’s consumer electronics; the Huaqiangbei market at its center is the biggest electronic components market anywhere.
Wuhan: Wuhan is three old towns, Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang, merged in 1927 at the meeting of the Yangtze and the Han. The uprising of October 1911 that ended the Qing dynasty started at Wuchang. The first bridge to carry road and rail across the Yangtze opened here in 1957.

Also on the mapChangsha · Guilin · Haikou · Luoyang · Nanning · Shantou · Zhengzhou

Southwest China5 on the map

Chengdu: Chengdu has been on the same site under the same name for more than two thousand years, which few cities anywhere can claim. The world’s first paper money was issued here under the Song. The breeding center north of the city holds a large share of the captive giant panda population.
Chongqing: Chongqing served as the wartime capital of China from 1938 to 1945 after the fall of Nanjing, and was bombed by Japanese aircraft for five years. Its hills are steep enough that a metro line runs through the sixth to eighth floors of an apartment building at Liziba.
Kunming: Kunming sits at about 1,890 meters on a plateau, high enough that it barely has a winter or a summer; the nickname is the spring city. The Burma Road ran from here to Lashio and was the only overland supply route into unoccupied China between 1938 and 1942.
Lhasa: Lhasa sits at about 3,650 meters, one of the highest cities in the world. The Potala Palace above it was built on the site of a seventh-century fort and rebuilt from 1645; it rises thirteen storeys up the hillside and was the seat of the Dalai Lamas until 1959. The railway from Qinghai, opened in 2006, crosses a pass at 5,072 meters.

Also on the mapGuiyang

Northwest China8 on the map

Dunhuang: Dunhuang was the last Chinese town on the Silk Road before the desert. The Mogao caves nearby hold about 492 grottoes painted between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, and a walled-up library room opened in 1900 gave up some 50,000 manuscripts, including the Diamond Sutra of 868, the earliest dated printed book known.
Kashgar: Kashgar sits where the two branches of the Silk Road that went around the Taklamakan met again before crossing the Pamirs. It has been a market town for over two thousand years and is closer to Baghdad than to Beijing. The old town, with its Sunday livestock market, is still the commercial center of the western basin.
Ürümqi: Ürümqi is farther from any sea than any other major city on earth, about 2,500 kilometers from the nearest coastline. It sits on the northern side of the Tian Shan, and the whole country runs on Beijing time, so the sun here rises around eight in the morning and sets close to ten at night in summer.
Xi'an: Xi’an was the capital under thirteen dynasties and, as Chang’an under the Tang, was probably the largest city in the world around 750, with perhaps a million people inside the walls. It was the eastern terminus of the Silk Road. The Ming city wall, 13.7 kilometers around, still stands and can be walked or cycled.

Also on the mapLanzhou · Turpan · Xining · Yinchuan

Now find all 44 on the map

How this one works

How many cities are on the map?

44. Every one of them is on the map, and a run asks 8 of them. Pass a round and the places you found in it drop out of the pool, so the next run is what you have left.

What is a round?

A run of 8 questions, and 6 right passes it. 6 rounds cover the whole map, and the counter at the top of the China page counts the ones behind you. Passing is what banks a round's finds: miss the mark and nothing is taken off the map, so every place that round asked about is still there to be asked again. A round is always the places you have not found yet, and when fewer than five are left it is topped up with a few you have found as review, so the last round is never one or two questions. Three quarters of it passes it.

Can I start the map over?

Yes. "Reset this map" under the counter puts all 44 back in the pool and sets the rounds to zero the moment you press it, so the whole map is there to be found again from nothing. It clears this map only; the other maps of China keep their progress.

Do I need an account?

No. The game plays in the page, and a guest's progress is kept in their own browser. Signing in carries it between devices and earns XP for a run.

What happens when I get one wrong?

The map names what you actually hit, then lights up the right answer in green and tells you something about the place. Missing one is how most of this map gets learned.

The other maps of China

Chinese provinces31 to find Chinese waters34 to find

The same map for other countries

North America

Oceania

South America

All of China’s maps together on the China atlas page, the country itself on the China guide, and the other two hundred on the world map.