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Yeah, there are a bunch of places where no apparent combination of city, province, country seemed to work. Churchill, for example.
I’m sure there’s a correct answer but I couldn’t figure it out.
Churchill works, though?
Literally just go on the world quiz and type Churchill, Canada. Unless you're referring to a different Churchill than the one in Manitoba, it works.
Why is knowing the names of 35 Chinese cities “rote memorization” while knowing the names of 35 American or European cities just, you know, something you can do?
Because we know cities in most Western countries through cultural osmosis. Nobody in the US or Europe learned about Paris, Rome, or London for the first time via a deliberate deep dive on Wikipedia. Conversely, not many Westerners know about Chengdu or Hangzhou unless they've read up on China.
That's a good explanation and avoids the careless claim that "nobody has ever heard of Chinese cities" (without considering that people in Asia probably have).
I just got back from Hong Kong and quizzed my relatives on US cities and place names. Nothing too tricky – I picked them out of NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA locations. (In other words, major cities and locations.) They heard of roughly 35-40% of those places. Yet, they can list off a gazillion Chinese cities without any effort.
It definitely depends on where you were raised. I've spent time in both North America and Asia, so I kind of wonder if I'd do better than average on this kind of test.
Most people in Asia don’t recognize most Chinese cities except for Shanghai or Beijing or some border cities unless they are people of Chinese origin living in other Asian countries.
I lived in Korea for a bit. My colleagues there definitely did know a lot of Chinese cities because of tourism and business. And the same can be said for their knowledge of Japanese cities.
Did you learn about Kumanovo through cultural osmosis? What about Tampere? I ask because the above user clearly knows a lot more European cities than Rome, London, Paris.
Because societies tend to be culturally self-absorbed, and language barriers are a thing. Our knowledge of geography is informed by how we are taught history and modern culture, and for good or for ill, there are a bunch of cities in China with large populations that get zero mention in the news and in most of the world’s history books.
Yes. For the life of me, I couldn’t name more than the capital from a bunch of African countries, and I’m far, far more conversant with African geography than the average person.
I guess after 20 or so cities you lose the money shots so you have to name about 250 more cities to get remotely -what?- spoiler!, the answer is at the bottom. I’m thinking I’m missing a ton of info because I just use a phone.
I find it strange that people get worked up about Westerners not knowing the names of Asian (especially Chinese) cities by heart. Cultures tend to know the most about cultures similar or geographically close to theirs and those they interact with.
East Asian people will be able to tell you all the major cities in East Asia, but probably can't tell you where Jacksonville, Fort Worth, or Columbus are.
It certainly doesn't help that China specifically is hostile towards the West and has an authoritarian regime that hinders the spread of information.
>It certainly doesn't help that China specifically is hostile towards the West and has an authoritarian regime that hinders the spread of information.
I don't think this has anything to do with authoritarianism hindering information. India's cities are even lesser known.
People weren't scratching their heads wondering what Moscow was because that damn dictator Stalin wouldn't release this secret information to the world.
People simply know places they are closer to and might go to more. Most Singaporeans know where the big Chinese, Thai, Taiwanese and Malaysian cities are cos thats where they go to travel the most.
East and south Asian cities tend to much larger and more relevant on a global scale though, relative to random towns like Jacksonville. I am American born and raised and I’m always shocked if I meet someone who doesn’t know about Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu, Nanjing, Hangzhou, etc. All gigantic and hugely influential cities.
Jacksonville is the tenth largest city in the US, not really a "random town."
If they're hugely influential besides just being a large city, what exactly is the impact of, say, Chongqing on the global scale? Genuinely asking.
Columbus is a globally important city for finance and science research, but again, it's not on the radar of most East Asians I would say despite being one of America's largest.
Chongqing’s an auto manufacturing hub. Most of the output is domestic, so the cars aren’t being made for export.
In that sense, it’s comparable to Detroit. It doesn’t have the cultural associations with decay and Rust Belt though (that’s the Chinese northeast, the parts that are sandwiched between Russia and North Korea).
I personally don’t think it’s a city that will appear in the western cultural zeitgeist. Cool nightscapes though, and the sheer amount of verticality in the urban core is pretty neat.
Sure, I did see it's really important to China itself, but I couldn't find much that made it relevant to the world. My point is essentially that not every Chinese city with millions of people is some massively important city you have to remember. It's completely excusable if you haven't heard of cities outside of the big ones like Shanghai or Beijing.
I get what you are saying, but “haven’t heard of cities outside of the big ones like Shanghai or Beijing” is kind of funny when talking about Chongqing since it has the largest population of any Chinese municipality at 32M people (not all of that is urban though, but that would apply to Jacksonville as well as it is a city that gobbled up its suburbs and the kept going to anything that could be considered even NEAR Jacksonville). I mean it’s skyline is almost Manhattan like:
https://cdn.britannica.com/07/127807-050-695DED59/Skyline-area-confluence-Chongtianmen-Yangtze-Chongqing-rivers.jpg
https://chine.in/usb/images/mobile/6dacf0e649507359c53760cf712bfb8a_mini_.jpg
Sure, but another part of my point is that population doesn't necessarily mean a city is of global relevance that everyone should know of it. Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and many other Chinese cities smaller than Chongqing are of more global significance than Chongqing, which is more of a regional city.
Because most of those 35 cities in China likely have cultural relevance comparable to random places that Internationally not many will have heard of like Tamworth, Inverell, Narrabri, or Orange here
Cities like Qingdao and Kunming have a lot more cultural, economic, political, and historic relevance than Tamworth or Inverell, but because western education centers Europe in its presentation of history, these cities feel peripheral to you.
education in Australia seems to very strongly centre around Australia, South East Asia and Oceania more than Europe so idk if you really know what your talking about
No, it's just a screenshot of the unlabeled map, the same as my original post. I'm trying to keep it as spoiler free as possible.
I've been plugging away for 20 minutes. I'm confident I can get to 1,000 easy.
Pro-tip: type in every European city you can think of. Almost all of them will have US namesakes. Ditto for classical cities like Palmyra and Antioch. And cities from the Bible.
Yeah, I have a ridiculous amount of US cities, just not everything over 500k. By the time I get those, I might be so close on the 100k cities that I just keep going.
Yup. An easy way to get a ton of US towns is just to guess a European name plus modifiers:
- London
- New London
- York
- New York
- Little York
- North York
- Cape York
Etc.
See also: the names of kings, the names of prime ministers, the names of Presidents, the names of saints, the names of explorers, the names of important 19th century generals
Not really, Tokyo, Jakarta, Ciudad de Mexico, Buenos Aires, Paris, London, Lima, Santiago de Chile and all the other San+ Spanish name city already makes you really close.
Maybe I'm biased because I speak a Chinese language and am more familiar with China, but I still feel like India is harder.
In China, most cities are two syllables long. The only ones I can think of that aren't two syllables are Qiqihar, Urumqi (both named from minority languages so easy enough) and Shijiazhuang.
You can put together stereotypical Chinese syllables and easily get city names. is a super common second syllable, it basically means region. as a second letter in syllables only happens after , and (and for Lhasa). All Mandarin syllables end in , , or up to 2 different vowels.
In India, I've noticed <-pur> is similar to <-zhou> in how common it is, but overall there are much fewer linguistic patterns I can use to accidentally remind myself of cities.
Sure, but that’s not different from memorization. It’s not *knowledge*. It’s like typing every US President’s name to get an easy 40+ when doing the US.
https://preview.redd.it/60uqx56n9qwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d08c36efbc0f0034dc54a43596454a01cea2f8c9
Couldn’t name more than 4 Chinese cities. Made it 10% tho
I love this website! However, I remember I was trying to get to a billion but I reached a limit. Then they switched up names and url and I lost all my progress :(
Also even with an overall population of around 13 million people, you have to separately type all 16 cities that comprises Metro Manila just to get all 13 million counted. Typing in Manila will only get you 1.8 million.
There's also sometimes the hilarious priorities it gives to cities/towns with the same name. Typing Kansas will give you a town in Oklahoma with a population of 711, instead of Kansas City which has a pop of 509k.
It counts Tokyo as 8 million when the Wikipedia entry lists it at 14 million. I'm pretty sure it gets its numbers from Wikipedia, considering it lists the exact same number for Kansas in Wikipedia, so I don;t know where it got 8 million from.
Thank you for posting to r/geography. This appears to be a quiz/challenge/game related post. Per Rule #4 of the subreddit we will unfortunately have to remove this post. If you would like to post this type of content to r/geography, please use the stickied geo quiz/challenge thread at the top of the subreddit page where discussion of or activity of playing geo games is welcome. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this decision or rule. Thank you, Mod Team
This thing is flawed in Canada, there’s multiple places in Ontario and Nova Scotia missing
Yeah, there are a bunch of places where no apparent combination of city, province, country seemed to work. Churchill, for example. I’m sure there’s a correct answer but I couldn’t figure it out.
It’s because this is a list of cities/urban areas. Churchill is a town with <1000 people.
I have a "city" of 80 people in there - Luzon, Spain. So it's not that.
Plenty of villages with a couple hundred inhabitants around me that counts
los veteranos ii moment
I put the drop-down on Canada and it took Churchill
Churchill works, though? Literally just go on the world quiz and type Churchill, Canada. Unless you're referring to a different Churchill than the one in Manitoba, it works.
If you want to get to a billion start with Canada
Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing = 1% of the world's population, today I learned
it's funny because you can type in what feels like any combination of letters you can pronounce and it's a real place in India
If you know enough place names you can get to a billion without using any cities in China
Sure. But not efficiently. I was at like 850 cities and 900m, then China bumped it right over super fast.
Why is knowing the names of 35 Chinese cities “rote memorization” while knowing the names of 35 American or European cities just, you know, something you can do?
Because we know cities in most Western countries through cultural osmosis. Nobody in the US or Europe learned about Paris, Rome, or London for the first time via a deliberate deep dive on Wikipedia. Conversely, not many Westerners know about Chengdu or Hangzhou unless they've read up on China.
That's a good explanation and avoids the careless claim that "nobody has ever heard of Chinese cities" (without considering that people in Asia probably have). I just got back from Hong Kong and quizzed my relatives on US cities and place names. Nothing too tricky – I picked them out of NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA locations. (In other words, major cities and locations.) They heard of roughly 35-40% of those places. Yet, they can list off a gazillion Chinese cities without any effort. It definitely depends on where you were raised. I've spent time in both North America and Asia, so I kind of wonder if I'd do better than average on this kind of test.
Most people in Asia don’t recognize most Chinese cities except for Shanghai or Beijing or some border cities unless they are people of Chinese origin living in other Asian countries.
I lived in Korea for a bit. My colleagues there definitely did know a lot of Chinese cities because of tourism and business. And the same can be said for their knowledge of Japanese cities.
Did you learn about Kumanovo through cultural osmosis? What about Tampere? I ask because the above user clearly knows a lot more European cities than Rome, London, Paris.
I am German and learned about Tampere by "cultural osmosis".
Tampere yes, Kumanovo i have never heard of until now, so also yes?
Tampere is Finland right
I thought Tampere was just the name of a company until now
I don't need to have learned about Komonovo to have learned the names of more than 35 cities through cultural osmosis.
Because societies tend to be culturally self-absorbed, and language barriers are a thing. Our knowledge of geography is informed by how we are taught history and modern culture, and for good or for ill, there are a bunch of cities in China with large populations that get zero mention in the news and in most of the world’s history books.
It's totally fair to know a few cities from each country too ... particularly capitals
Yes. For the life of me, I couldn’t name more than the capital from a bunch of African countries, and I’m far, far more conversant with African geography than the average person.
I guess after 20 or so cities you lose the money shots so you have to name about 250 more cities to get remotely -what?- spoiler!, the answer is at the bottom. I’m thinking I’m missing a ton of info because I just use a phone.
I find it strange that people get worked up about Westerners not knowing the names of Asian (especially Chinese) cities by heart. Cultures tend to know the most about cultures similar or geographically close to theirs and those they interact with. East Asian people will be able to tell you all the major cities in East Asia, but probably can't tell you where Jacksonville, Fort Worth, or Columbus are. It certainly doesn't help that China specifically is hostile towards the West and has an authoritarian regime that hinders the spread of information.
>It certainly doesn't help that China specifically is hostile towards the West and has an authoritarian regime that hinders the spread of information. I don't think this has anything to do with authoritarianism hindering information. India's cities are even lesser known. People weren't scratching their heads wondering what Moscow was because that damn dictator Stalin wouldn't release this secret information to the world. People simply know places they are closer to and might go to more. Most Singaporeans know where the big Chinese, Thai, Taiwanese and Malaysian cities are cos thats where they go to travel the most.
Yes, that's my point. It isn't the main reason, but an open country is going to have more well known cities than one that isn't.
East and south Asian cities tend to much larger and more relevant on a global scale though, relative to random towns like Jacksonville. I am American born and raised and I’m always shocked if I meet someone who doesn’t know about Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu, Nanjing, Hangzhou, etc. All gigantic and hugely influential cities.
Jacksonville is the tenth largest city in the US, not really a "random town." If they're hugely influential besides just being a large city, what exactly is the impact of, say, Chongqing on the global scale? Genuinely asking. Columbus is a globally important city for finance and science research, but again, it's not on the radar of most East Asians I would say despite being one of America's largest.
Chongqing’s an auto manufacturing hub. Most of the output is domestic, so the cars aren’t being made for export. In that sense, it’s comparable to Detroit. It doesn’t have the cultural associations with decay and Rust Belt though (that’s the Chinese northeast, the parts that are sandwiched between Russia and North Korea). I personally don’t think it’s a city that will appear in the western cultural zeitgeist. Cool nightscapes though, and the sheer amount of verticality in the urban core is pretty neat.
Sure, I did see it's really important to China itself, but I couldn't find much that made it relevant to the world. My point is essentially that not every Chinese city with millions of people is some massively important city you have to remember. It's completely excusable if you haven't heard of cities outside of the big ones like Shanghai or Beijing.
I hope you’re excited for this exact same conversation in 10 years, just with Indian cities
I get what you are saying, but “haven’t heard of cities outside of the big ones like Shanghai or Beijing” is kind of funny when talking about Chongqing since it has the largest population of any Chinese municipality at 32M people (not all of that is urban though, but that would apply to Jacksonville as well as it is a city that gobbled up its suburbs and the kept going to anything that could be considered even NEAR Jacksonville). I mean it’s skyline is almost Manhattan like: https://cdn.britannica.com/07/127807-050-695DED59/Skyline-area-confluence-Chongtianmen-Yangtze-Chongqing-rivers.jpg https://chine.in/usb/images/mobile/6dacf0e649507359c53760cf712bfb8a_mini_.jpg
Sure, but another part of my point is that population doesn't necessarily mean a city is of global relevance that everyone should know of it. Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and many other Chinese cities smaller than Chongqing are of more global significance than Chongqing, which is more of a regional city.
Because most of those 35 cities in China likely have cultural relevance comparable to random places that Internationally not many will have heard of like Tamworth, Inverell, Narrabri, or Orange here
Cities like Qingdao and Kunming have a lot more cultural, economic, political, and historic relevance than Tamworth or Inverell, but because western education centers Europe in its presentation of history, these cities feel peripheral to you.
education in Australia seems to very strongly centre around Australia, South East Asia and Oceania more than Europe so idk if you really know what your talking about
All I know is I've lost so much time playing the US version the last 36 hours, I'm definitely not doing the world version.
What site is it?
Cityquiz.io
As a former truck driver, the US is too easy: https://imgur.com/a/wBfSdgS
I'm scared to click that link, because it might give away answers. I have 35 of 37 over 500k cities, and I'm quitting as soon as I remember them.
No, it's just a screenshot of the unlabeled map, the same as my original post. I'm trying to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I've been plugging away for 20 minutes. I'm confident I can get to 1,000 easy. Pro-tip: type in every European city you can think of. Almost all of them will have US namesakes. Ditto for classical cities like Palmyra and Antioch. And cities from the Bible.
Yeah, I have a ridiculous amount of US cities, just not everything over 500k. By the time I get those, I might be so close on the 100k cities that I just keep going.
A LOT of those European cities will have like 20+ small US towns named after them, not just a couple.
Yup. An easy way to get a ton of US towns is just to guess a European name plus modifiers: - London - New London - York - New York - Little York - North York - Cape York Etc. See also: the names of kings, the names of prime ministers, the names of Presidents, the names of saints, the names of explorers, the names of important 19th century generals
That’s why the original ‘I’ve been Everywhere’ was written by a truck driver (and also why the verses rhyme better)
Not really, Tokyo, Jakarta, Ciudad de Mexico, Buenos Aires, Paris, London, Lima, Santiago de Chile and all the other San+ Spanish name city already makes you really close.
Maybe I'm biased because I speak a Chinese language and am more familiar with China, but I still feel like India is harder. In China, most cities are two syllables long. The only ones I can think of that aren't two syllables are Qiqihar, Urumqi (both named from minority languages so easy enough) and Shijiazhuang. You can put together stereotypical Chinese syllables and easily get city names. is a super common second syllable, it basically means region. as a second letter in syllables only happens after ,
and (and for Lhasa). All Mandarin syllables end in , , or up to 2 different vowels.
In India, I've noticed <-pur> is similar to <-zhou> in how common it is, but overall there are much fewer linguistic patterns I can use to accidentally remind myself of cities. Sure, but that’s not different from memorization. It’s not *knowledge*. It’s like typing every US President’s name to get an easy 40+ when doing the US.
Damn that’s hard, I could only get to 400m (9%)
What’s the site?
https://cityquiz.io
Thx
The Alphabet game is awesome if you use cities.
If I memorize 35 Chinese words I'm going to tell people I speak Chinese.
What are the cities in Brazil? Those feel kinda random, especially in the northeast
Porto Alegre, Florianopolis, Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Salvatore, Natal, Manaus
Those are the obvious ones, but really what I would like to know is what’s just south of Natal (also it’s Salvador and not Salvatore for that matter)
https://preview.redd.it/60uqx56n9qwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d08c36efbc0f0034dc54a43596454a01cea2f8c9 Couldn’t name more than 4 Chinese cities. Made it 10% tho
I love this website! However, I remember I was trying to get to a billion but I reached a limit. Then they switched up names and url and I lost all my progress :(
Also even with an overall population of around 13 million people, you have to separately type all 16 cities that comprises Metro Manila just to get all 13 million counted. Typing in Manila will only get you 1.8 million.
The way this site handles that is weird. They don’t have Tokyo in their top 20? Or Jakarta? Manila should absolutely be in there as well.
There's also sometimes the hilarious priorities it gives to cities/towns with the same name. Typing Kansas will give you a town in Oklahoma with a population of 711, instead of Kansas City which has a pop of 509k. It counts Tokyo as 8 million when the Wikipedia entry lists it at 14 million. I'm pretty sure it gets its numbers from Wikipedia, considering it lists the exact same number for Kansas in Wikipedia, so I don;t know where it got 8 million from.
another sh”tpost