Photo location game · Asia
China landmarks quiz: guess where 24 photos were taken
24 places in China, each with a photo, a short fact and its spot on the map. Play five of them here, then look through the rest below.
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Five photos from China. Tap the map where you think each one was taken.
Tap the map where you think this is
Where they are
24 on the mapAll 24 places
The defensive wall snaking along forested ridges north of Beijing.
Photo: Velatrix / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The vermilion-walled imperial palace complex at the centre of Beijing.
Photo: User:kallgan / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Thousands of clay soldiers guarding a Qin emperor’s tomb.
Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Thousands of sheer sandstone pillars rising through mist.
Photo: chensiyuan / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A river winding among conical karst hills and rice fields.
Photo: chensiyuan / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A white-and-red palace-fortress towering over a Tibetan city.
Photo: Ondřej Žváček / CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
Futuristic towers across the river from the historic Bund.
Photo: King of Hearts / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Striped rainbow-coloured sandstone ridges in Gansu.
Photo: Terry Wu / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The circular Hall of Prayer where Ming and Qing emperors prayed for good harvests.
Photo: Shujianyang / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A former Chinese capital where Ming city walls meet a modern skyline.
Photo: xiquinhosilva / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The fifth highest mountain on Earth, a four-sided pyramid near Everest.
Photo: Ben Tubby / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A 71-metre seated Buddha carved into a cliff face where three rivers meet.
Photo: xiquinhosilva / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A pyramid-shaped Tibetan peak sacred to four religions, never climbed.
Photo: Jean-Marie Hullot / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Tens of thousands of Buddha figures carved into limestone cliffs along a river.
Photo: Rialfver Original uploader was Rialfver at nl.wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Some 51,000 Buddhist statues carved into a sandstone cliff in the 5th century.
Photo: Marcin Białek / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Victory Peak, the northernmost 7,000-metre mountain in the world.
Photo: Chen Zhao / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A valley of turquoise lakes and travertine waterfalls in the Sichuan mountains.
Photo: Chensiyuan / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The imperial lake garden of Beijing, with a hill of temples over Kunming Lake.
Photo: xiquinhosilva / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Thousands of quartz-sandstone pillars, the inspiration for the floating mountains in Avatar.
Photo: chensiyuan / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
One of Asia's largest deserts, famous for the dinosaur eggs found there in the 1920s.
Photo: Christopher Michel from San Francisco, USA / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Nearly 500 Buddhist cave temples painted over a thousand years on the Silk Road.
Photo: Zhangzhugang / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Shang dynasty capital where the oracle bones, China's earliest writing, were found.
Photo: xiquinhosilva / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hangzhou's lake of pagodas and causeways, the model for gardens across China and Japan.
Photo: Louisa Salazar / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The highest mountain on Earth, 8,849 metres above sea level.
Photo: shrimpo1967, Papa Lima Whiskey 2 / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsHow to place them
Jengish Chokusu is the furthest west and Pudong Skyline, Shanghai the furthest east, 3,850 km apart. Great Wall of China has company: Forbidden City, Beijing; Temple of Heaven; and Summer Palace are all less than 120 km away. Jengish Chokusu is far from everything else here; the closest place to it is Mount Kailash, 1,200 km away.
Of the 24 photos, 12 are rated easy. The hard ones are Zhangjiajie; Li River, Guilin; Potala Palace, Lhasa; and Pudong Skyline, Shanghai. The one expert photo is Zhangye Danxia. Any pin within 150 km of Gobi Desert scores the full 5,000, more room than any other photo here. Yinxu is the Shang dynasty capital where the oracle bones, China's earliest writing, were found.
The daily in the app mixes photos from all 167 countries in the game, five a day, the same five for everyone.
Play the dailyQuestions & answers
How many places in China are in the game?
24, from Gobi Desert in the north to Li River, Guilin in the south. A round on this page plays five of them.
Which photo from China is the hardest?
Only Zhangye Danxia is rated expert. A miss of 693 km beyond the radius costs half the score.
Which photo is the easiest to score full points on?
Gobi Desert: its accuracy radius is 150 km, so any pin inside that circle scores 5,000.