Chinese provinces, regions and municipalities, found on the map
Twenty-two provinces, five autonomous regions and four municipalities, from Xinjiang in the far northwest to the island of Hainan. Every question can be reasoned out from the shape of the country, whether it is the largest one, the one on the peninsula pointing at Korea, or the one wrapped around the capital.
31 to find, 8 a run.
4 rounds, 6 of 8 to pass each. Pass one and its places are yours.
⚔️ Challenge someone to Chinese provinces, regions and municipalities
31 provinces, regions and municipalities · 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 31 that have one. Reading them first is not cheating.
North and Northeast China8 on the map
- Beijing
- Beijing is a municipality, meaning it is administered directly rather than as part of a province, one of four in the country. It has been the capital for most of the time since 1272 under the Yuan, Ming, Qing and the People’s Republic. The Forbidden City at its center was the imperial palace from 1420 to 1924.
- Heilongjiang
- Heilongjiang is named for that river: the Chinese name means black dragon river. It is the coldest province in the country, with winter temperatures in the north falling below minus 30 degrees Celsius, and the ice festival at Harbin builds a city of lit blocks cut out of the Songhua every January.
- Inner Mongolia
- Inner Mongolia stretches about 2,400 kilometers from end to end, from the edge of Xinjiang to the forests of the northeast, and its shape follows the border with Mongolia. It holds roughly a quarter of the world’s known coal reserves and most of the country’s rare earth production, which comes from a single mine at Bayan Obo.
Also on the mapHebei · Jilin · Liaoning · Shanxi · Tianjin
East China7 on the map
- Jiangsu
- Jiangsu is the flattest province in the country: almost 70 percent of it is under 50 meters, and it is threaded with canals and lakes. Nanjing, its capital, was the capital of China at several points, most recently under the Republic from 1927. The province has the highest income per head of any province.
- Shandong
- Shandong was the home of Confucius, born at Qufu around 551 BC, and of Mencius after him. Mount Tai in its center is the first of the five sacred mountains and has been climbed by emperors for two thousand years. The province has about 101 million people, second only to Guangdong.
- Shanghai
- Shanghai is the largest city in the country and its port handles more container traffic than any other in the world. It was a fishing and cotton town until the treaty of 1842 opened it to foreign trade and carved out concessions run by Britain, France and the United States; the buildings of the Bund date from that stretch.
- Zhejiang
- Zhejiang has the most broken coastline of any province, with over 3,000 islands off it. Hangzhou, its capital, was the capital of the Southern Song from 1138 and was described by Marco Polo as the finest city in the world. The southern end of the Grand Canal, which runs 1,776 kilometers north to Beijing, is here.
Also on the mapAnhui · Fujian · Jiangxi
Central and South China6 on the map
- Guangdong
- Guangdong has about 127 million people, more than any other province and more than Japan. The delta of the Pearl River at its southern edge was made a special economic zone in 1980, and Shenzhen went from a county of some 300,000 people to a city of over 12 million inside four decades. Cantonese is the local language.
- Hainan
- Hainan is the smallest province by land area, about 35,000 square kilometers, and the only one that is entirely tropical. It was part of Guangdong until 1988. For most of imperial history it was where the court sent officials it wanted a long way away, which is roughly what the poet Su Shi was doing there in 1097.
Also on the mapGuangxi · Henan · Hubei · Hunan
Southwest China5 on the map
- Chongqing
- Chongqing was split from Sichuan in 1997 to administer the resettlement of over a million people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam downstream. It is built on hills where the Jialing meets the Yangtze, steep enough that it is one of the few large Chinese cities with almost no bicycles.
- Sichuan
- The eastern half of Sichuan is a basin ringed by mountains, which traps cloud so thoroughly that the province is famously short of sunshine. That basin has been one of the great rice regions of Asia since the Dujiangyan irrigation system was built on the Min River around 256 BC, without a dam, and it still works.
- Tibet
- The Tibetan Plateau averages over 4,500 meters and is the highest and largest plateau on earth, which is why it is sometimes called the third pole: outside the polar regions no larger body of ice exists. The Yangtze, the Yellow River, the Mekong, the Salween, the Brahmaputra and the Indus all rise on or around it.
- Yunnan
- Yunnan holds more of the country’s recorded plant and animal species than any other province, because it ranges from tropical forest at 76 meters to peaks over 6,700. Three great rivers, the Yangtze, the Mekong and the Salween, run parallel through its northwest within about 100 kilometers of each other before separating for good.
Also on the mapGuizhou
Northwest China5 on the map
- Gansu
- The narrow part is the Hexi Corridor, a strip of oases between mountains and desert that was the only practical road from China to Central Asia. The Great Wall ends at Jiayuguan in the middle of it. The Mogao caves at Dunhuang, at the far end, hold about 492 painted grottoes cut between the fourth and fourteenth centuries.
- Qinghai
- Qinghai is named after that lake, which is the largest in the country. The province sits on the northern edge of the plateau and holds the headwaters of the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Mekong, so a single area of high grassland feeds the rivers of most of East and Southeast Asia.
- Shaanxi
- Xi’an, in the south of Shaanxi, was the capital under thirteen dynasties including the Han and the Tang, and was the eastern end of the Silk Road. The terracotta army of the first emperor stands about 40 kilometers east of it, found by farmers digging a well in 1974.
- Xinjiang
- Xinjiang is about 1.66 million square kilometers, a sixth of the country and larger than any other province or region. Two mountain systems, the Tian Shan and the Kunlun, box in the Tarim Basin between them, and in the middle of that basin is the Taklamakan, one of the largest sand deserts in the world. The Silk Road split to go around it either side.
Also on the mapNingxia
How this one works
How many provinces, regions and municipalities are on the map?
31. 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. 4 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 31 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
The same map for other countries
North America
Africa
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.