Free Printable Ancient China Word Search

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Ancient China Word Search

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0 of 16 words found

GSLDHEENFBEPTZX

SCALLIGRAPHYRHR

LOETERRACOTTACL

ONSOBWHXYDRFWNR

YFBBPEMPERORPRK

PURAADDLEACJETI

ACOMPASSWGVQQAT

YINBEGKUROMTXIE

OUZORGASZNVWIZY

OSEORPEASANTEAS

GCRFKGREATWALLT

DERXYNBQDYNASTY

NAAIKJABFEIOQIN

LJYGTPFVCGNRWWH

HMTOMBRUAOMITTA

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

QinQIN
DynastyDYNASTY
EmperorEMPEROR
PaperPAPER
CompassCOMPASS
KiteKITE
BronzeBRONZE
CalligraphyCALLIGRAPHY
Great WallGREAT WALL
ConfuciusCONFUCIUS
PeasantPEASANT
BambooBAMBOO
DragonDRAGON
TerracottaTERRACOTTA
TombTOMB
TeaTEA

16 of 24 words from the Ancient China Favorites list.

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Answer key: Ancient China Word Search

GSLDHEENFBEPTZX

SCALLIGRAPHYRHR

LOETERRACOTTACL

ONSOBWHXYDRFWNR

YFBBPEMPERORPRK

PURAADDLEACJETI

ACOMPASSWGVQQAT

YINBEGKUROMTXIE

OUZORGASZNVWIZY

OSEORPEASANTEAS

GCRFKGREATWALLT

DERXYNBQDYNASTY

NAAIKJABFEIOQIN

LJYGTPFVCGNRWWH

HMTOMBRUAOMITTA

QIN, DYNASTY, EMPEROR, PAPER, COMPASS, KITE, BRONZE, CALLIGRAPHY, GREAT WALL, CONFUCIUS, PEASANT, BAMBOO, DRAGON, TERRACOTTA, TOMB, TEA

Next step Make a puzzle from your own ancient China word list Scramble these ancient China words

All 130 words

Dynasties and Emperors 23

Bureaucracy Government by many ranked officials, each with a set job.
Census An official count of people; one taken in AD 2 survives.
Civil Service The body of trained officials who ran the government.
Dynastic Cycle The pattern of a ruling family rising, growing weak and being replaced.
Dynasty A family of rulers that hands the throne from one generation to the next.
Eastern Han The second half of the same dynasty, from AD 25 to 220, ruled from Luoyang.
Emperor The ruler of all China; the title was first taken in 221 BC.
Fu Hao A Shang queen who led armies; her unrobbed tomb was found in 1976.
Liu Bang The man of peasant birth who founded the Han dynasty.
Mandate The right to rule, which Heaven was said to give a good king and take from a bad one.
Qin The short dynasty that united the country in 221 BC; its name is the likeliest source of the word China.
Regent Someone who rules for a king who is still a child.
Shang The first dynasty proved by writing and digs; it ruled from about 1600 BC.

Show all 130 words (117 more)

Dynasties and Emperors, continued

Shi Huangdi The title, meaning First Emperor, taken by the king who united the warring kingdoms.
Standardize To make the same everywhere, as the first emperor did with weights, coins and writing.
Throne The seat of a ruler.
Wang Mang The official who seized the throne in AD 9 and split the Han age in two.
Warlord A leader who holds a region by the strength of his own army.
Warring States The age of rival kingdoms, about 475 to 221 BC, that ended with one conqueror.
Western Han The first half of a four-century dynasty, from 202 BC, with its capital in the west.
Wudi The Han ruler of 54 years who pushed the borders west and made Confucian study official.
Xia The first dynasty in traditional histories, said to begin with Yu the Great.
Zhou The longest dynasty, lasting nearly eight hundred years.

Chinese Inventions 23

Abacus A frame of sliding beads for doing sums.
Bell A bronze instrument; sets of them, tuned to different notes, were played in royal courts.
Bronze The metal of copper and tin that the Shang cast into great ritual pots.
Brush The writing tool of a scholar, made of animal hair set in bamboo.
Calligraphy The art of beautiful writing.
Cast Iron Metal poured into molds while molten, made in China centuries before Europe.
Chain Pump A loop of flat boards, nicknamed the dragon backbone, that lifted river water into the fields.
Chopsticks A pair of slim sticks for picking up food.
Compass A tool with a magnetized pointer; an early Han kind used a spoon-shaped stone.
Crank A handle that turns a machine, used on Han winnowing fans.
Crossbow A bow set on a stock and fired with a trigger.
Harness Straps that let a horse pull with its chest and not its throat.
Ink Black liquid for writing, made by rubbing a soot stick with water on a stone.
Iron Plow A farm tool with a metal blade that turned heavy soil.
Kite A light frame flown on a string in the wind.
Lacquer Tree sap brushed on in layers to give bowls and boxes a hard shine.
Paper Made from bark, rags and old nets; a Han court official improved the method in AD 105.
Porcelain Hard white pottery fired at great heat.
Rudder A hinged blade at the back of a ship for steering.
Salt Well A deep hole drilled to reach brine under the ground.
Seismoscope A bronze jar built in AD 132 that dropped a ball to show the direction of an earthquake.
Silk Fine cloth woven from the thread of a moth's cocoon, kept secret for centuries.
Wheelbarrow A one-wheeled cart pushed by hand, shown in Han tomb art.

Rivers, Walls and Roads 26

Anyang The site of the last Shang capital, where thousands of oracle bones were dug up.
Changan The Han capital and eastern end of the caravan routes; today the city is Xi'an.
Dike A bank of earth built to hold back a river.
Gobi The desert to the north, in Mongolia and China.
Great Wall A chain of walls along the northern border, first linked up under the first emperor.
Himalayas The highest mountain range on Earth, on the southwest edge of China.
Huang He The Chinese name of the river colored by the fine soil it carries.
Loess Fine yellow soil blown by the wind; it is easy to farm and easy to wash away.
Luoyang The capital of the later Han emperors.
Middle Kingdom What the Chinese called their own land, as the center of the world.
Monsoon A seasonal wind that brings heavy summer rain.
Mount Tai A holy mountain in the east that emperors climbed to make offerings.
Oasis A green spot with water in a desert.
Paddy A flooded field for growing rice.
Pass A gap through mountains or a wall, guarded by a gate.
Plateau A wide area of high flat land.
Sichuan A fertile basin in the southwest, watered by a river project begun in 256 BC.
Silk Road The web of trade routes that carried goods from Han China across Asia to the West.
Steppe Dry grassland to the north, home of herders on horseback.
Taklamakan A sand desert in the far west that caravans went around, not across.
Terrace A flat step cut into a hillside for farming.
Tibet The high plateau in the west, called the roof of the world.
Wei River The largest branch of the Yellow River; the Zhou and Qin heartland lay in its valley.
Xiongnu The horse-riding people of the northern grasslands, great rivals of the Han.
Yangtze The longest river in Asia, flowing through central China.
Yellow River The northern river along which the first dynasties arose.

Thinkers and Beliefs 25

Analects The book of sayings of Confucius, gathered by his students.
Ancestor A family member of long ago, honored with offerings.
Ban Zhao The first known woman historian of China, who finished the Book of Han.
Buddhism The religion from India that reached China along the trade routes in Han times.
Confucianism The teaching that order comes from respect in the family and virtue in rulers.
Confucius The teacher, born in 551 BC, who taught respect, learning and good conduct.
Daoism The teaching of living simply and in step with nature.
Filial Piety Respect and care for parents and elders.
Five Classics The old books that every Confucian student had to master.
Harmony Peaceful balance among people and with nature.
Heaven The highest power, which watched over rulers.
I Ching The Book of Changes, used for telling fortunes with sixty-four six-line figures.
Laozi The sage said to have written the Tao Te Ching.
Legalism The teaching that only strict laws and harsh penalties keep order; the Qin ruled by it.
Mencius The follower of Confucius who taught that people are good by nature.
Mozi The thinker who taught care for all people equally.
Oracle Bone An ox shoulder blade or turtle shell, cracked with heat to ask the spirits a question.
Ritual A set ceremony done the same way each time.
Sage A very wise person.
Scholar A learned person; in Han times one who had studied the classics could serve in government.
Sima Qian The Han historian called the father of Chinese history writing.
Sun Tzu The general said to have written The Art of War.
Virtue Goodness of character.
Yin and Yang The idea of two opposite forces, dark and light, that balance each other.
Zhuangzi A Daoist thinker who once dreamed he was a butterfly.

Daily Life in Ancient China 33

Artisan A skilled maker of goods by hand.
Bamboo A giant woody grass used for houses, pipes, and strips to write on.
Caravan A line of traders and pack animals traveling together.
Chariot A horse-drawn war cart, the mark of a Shang or Zhou noble.
Cocoon The case a caterpillar spins around itself, unwound to make thread.
Courtyard An open space in the middle of a house, with rooms on all sides.
Cuju An old ball-kicking game.
Dragon A mythical beast of rain and rivers, later the sign of the emperor.
Drum An instrument beaten to signal troops and mark the hours.
Hemp A plant whose fibers made the everyday cloth of ordinary people.
Jade A hard green stone carved into discs, blades and charms.
Kiln An oven for firing pottery.
Lantern A light in a paper or silk shade.
Merchant A trader, ranked low by scholars because he made nothing himself.
Millet The small-seeded grain that fed the dry north.
Mulberry The tree whose leaves are the only food of the silk moth's young.
New Year The spring festival that begins the lunar calendar.
Noodles Long strips of dough; a bowl of them four thousand years old was found in northwest China.
Oxen Cattle that pulled the plow.
Peasant A farmer who worked a small plot; most people were one.
Phoenix A mythical bird, later the sign of the empress.
Pig The most common farm animal for meat.
Rice The grain of the warm, wet south.
Robe A long loose garment tied with a sash.
Silkworm The caterpillar that spins a cocoon of fine thread.
Soybean A bean first farmed in China, made into sauce and curd.
Tea A drink made by steeping leaves in hot water; it comes from China.
Terracotta Baked clay; thousands of life-size soldiers of it guard the tomb of the first emperor.
Tomb A burial place; nobles were buried with goods for the next life.
Weiqi A board game of black and white stones, known in the West as Go.
Wheat A northern grain ground into flour for noodles and buns.
Zither A long flat instrument with strings to pluck, played by scholars.
Zodiac The cycle of twelve years, each named for an animal.

How this list was compiled: Own work: the 130 words and every clue were written for this page. Dates, names and places in the clues were checked on October 7, 2026 against English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), among them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_dynasty and the article on each person, place or thing named in a clue. Licence: own work

How it works

This free printable ancient China word search covers the Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han. Its first sheet mixes 16 favorites, Silk, Jade, Confucius and Great Wall among the 24, and five lists follow the unit one topic at a time.

Read the full guide

Dynasties and inventions as their own puzzles

Dynasties and Emperors (23) runs from Xia and Shang to Eastern Han, with Mandate, Warring States and Shi Huangdi. Chinese Inventions (23) has Paper, Compass, Seismoscope, Wheelbarrow and Cast Iron. The Paper clue reads "Made from bark, rags and old nets; a Han court official improved the method in AD 105."

Geography, thinkers and a PDF

Rivers, Walls and Roads (26) holds Yellow River, Yangtze, Loess, Gobi and Silk Road. Thinkers and Beliefs (25) sets Confucius, Laozi and Mencius beside Legalism, Filial Piety and Oracle Bone. For a PDF, choose Save as PDF in the print window; the answer key is page 2.

Names use pinyin spelling without marks: Laozi, Zhou, Qin, Sima Qian. The old capital is entered as Changan.
Easy Ancient China has 36 words of 3 to 5 letters, from Xia and Qin to Silk, Jade and Tea.

Questions and answers

What are the dynasties of ancient China in order?

Xia, the traditional first dynasty, then Shang from about 1600 BC, Zhou from about 1046 BC, Qin from 221 BC and Han from 202 BC to AD 220. All five are in Dynasties and Emperors, with Western Han and Eastern Han.

What did ancient China invent?

Paper, silk, the compass, cast iron, the wheelbarrow and the seismoscope, a bronze jar of AD 132 that showed the direction of an earthquake. Chinese Inventions has 23 words, and each clue says what the thing did.

Who was the first emperor of China?

The king of Qin, who united the warring kingdoms in 221 BC and took the title Shi Huangdi, First Emperor. He made weights, coins and writing the same everywhere. Shi Huangdi, Standardize and Terracotta are words here.

Is this a word search about China today?

No. The lists stop with the Han dynasty in AD 220, so they suit a history unit. The rivers, deserts and mountains are still on the map, but modern cities and provinces are left out.

All 130 words

Dynasties and Emperors 23

Dynasties and Emperors, continued

Chinese Inventions 23

Rivers, Walls and Roads 26

Thinkers and Beliefs 25

Daily Life in Ancient China 33

How it works

Dynasties and inventions as their own puzzles

Geography, thinkers and a PDF

Questions and answers

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