Ancient China's first farming villages grew along a river that carried heavy loads of fine loess silt down from the north-western plateau. Which river was this?

Early Chinese farmers gave the Huang He a nickname meaning 'China's Sorrow'. What behavior of the river earned it that name?

One great river crosses China from west to east through the warm, rainy south and is the longest river in Asia. What is its name?

A vast stony desert of gravel and low dunes stretches across the lands north of ancient China's farming heartland. What is that desert called?

Southwest of ancient China rise the highest mountains on Earth, walling the region off from South Asia. Which mountain range is this?

The Zhou dynasty ruled for roughly eight hundred years, longer than any other Chinese dynasty.

Deserts, high mountains and a wide ocean kept ancient China largely separated from other early civilizations. What did that separation encourage?

Chinese history is usually organized into dynasties. What does the word dynasty mean?

Traditional Chinese histories name one dynasty as the earliest of all, although archaeologists still argue about how much evidence supports it. Which dynasty is that?

Shang kings had questions carved onto animal bones and turtle shells, heated them until they cracked, and read the cracks as answers. What are these objects called?

Shang workshops were famous for casting heavy ritual vessels used in ceremonies for royal ancestors. Which metal were those vessels made from?

The Shang dynasty was overthrown by a people from the Wei River valley to the west. Which dynasty did they found?

After centuries of warfare among rival states, the long Zhou period ended and a new dynasty united China. Which dynasty came immediately after the Zhou?

Zhou rulers explained their overthrow of the Shang by claiming that a divine power had taken the right to rule away from the unjust Shang and given it to them. What is this idea called?

In China's dynastic cycle, a run of floods, famines and rebellions was read as a sign of what?

Southern China is warm and receives heavy summer rain, so its fields were flooded rather than left dry. Which grain became the staple crop there?

The North China Plain was buried in loess, a fine soil blown there by the wind. Why did loess help the earliest farmers?

North of China's farmland lie dry grasslands where herders moved with their animals instead of planting crops. Why did Chinese rulers build long earth walls along that frontier?

In eastern China, summer winds off the ocean bring heavy rain while winter winds blow cold and dry from inland. What is this seasonal wind pattern called?

Ancient Chinese workers fed caterpillars on mulberry leaves and unwound the threads of their cocoons. Which valuable cloth did they produce this way?