Chinese Empress Quiz
Three games built on Xiang Li’s Chinese Empresses: a portrait to unveil each day, seven trivia questions each day, and a personality quiz that matches you to one of twelve empresses.
Daily portrait · 6 guesses
Empress Unveiled
One of Xiang Li’s silk portraits, seen very close. Each wrong guess steps back and opens a clue. Find her before the six lanterns go out.
Unroll today’s scroll →
Personality quiz · 10 questions · 2 minutes
Which Chinese Empress Are You?
Ten questions about how you would handle a palace — a horse no one can break, a rival who is winning, a fortune you did not expect. Every answer echoes something one of these women actually did.
Take the quiz →
Palace Audience · 7 questions · every day
Daily Chinese Empress Trivia
Seven questions a day about the empresses of China — the same seven for everyone, twenty seconds each. Answer them all and you are Empress for the day.
Play today’s round →
Every answer in these games comes from the histories on this site, where each of the women Xiang Li has painted on silk has a page of her own: who she was, what she did, what the sources say and where they disagree.
Play for a minute, and you will come away knowing an empress you had never heard of — the one who asked for paper instead of jade, the one who outlived four dynasties, the one who made an emperor swear an oath at fourteen.
Questions
How many empresses are in the quiz?
The personality quiz has twelve possible results, each an empress from Xiang Li’s Chinese Empresses collection with her own silk portrait. Empress Unveiled draws each day on her single portraits, and the daily trivia on the whole collection — more than a hundred and fifty women across twelve dynasties — and the emperors they married.
Where do the facts come from?
From the histories on this site. Each empress page is written from the Chinese dynastic histories — the Shiji, the Book of Han, the Book of the Later Han, the Old and New Books of Tang, the Zizhi Tongjian — and modern scholarship, and every answer in the game links back to the page it comes from.
Are the daily games the same for everyone?
Yes. Empress Unveiled and Palace Audience change every day at midnight, your local time, and everyone playing on the same date gets the same painting and the same seven questions. Your streak and scores are kept in your own browser — there is no account and nothing to sign up for.
Who painted the portraits?
Xiang Li 李湘, a Chinese-American artist who paints the empresses of China in Chinese watercolor on hand-cut silk. The collection has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and prints of the portraits are available in the shop.
Is it free?
All three games are free and need no sign-up. If you enjoy them, you can leave your email to hear about new portraits, new questions and exhibitions.
Want the whole story? Browse the Chinese Empresses collection →
Bring her story home
Canvas prints, scarves, puzzles and more — from $14.
Two full-color hardcovers — 217 empresses, 413 painted characters.
Questions? Write to xiangliart@gmail.com