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萬人空巷

简万人空巷 · 繁萬人空巷

Mandarin · pinyin wàn rén kōng xiàng

the multitudes come out from everywhere, emptying every alleyway (to celebrate)
the whole town turns out

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Characters in this entry

萬: Look up this written character
人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
空: kōng · empty, hollow, bare, deserted
巷: xiàng · alley, lane
万: wàn · mò · ten thousand; innumerable

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–2–1–4 · wan4 ren2 kong1 xiang4

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

萬人空巷 · find source passages ↗ · 万人空巷 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

maan6 jan4 hung1 hong6

Cantonese word readings for 萬人空巷. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

phrase

(idiomatic) the whole town turns out to (an event); all of the people in a place have turned out to (an event)

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

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