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車水馬龍

简车水马龙 · 繁車水馬龍

Mandarin · pinyin chē shuǐ mǎ lóng

endless stream of horse and carriages (idiom)
heavy traffic

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Characters in this entry

車: chē · cart, vehicle; carry in a cart; Kangxi radical 159
水: shuǐ · water, liquid, lotion, juice
馬: Look up this written character
龍: Look up this written character
车: chē · cart, vehicle; carry in cart
马: mǎ · horse; surname; Kangxi radical 187
龙: lóng · dragon; symbolic of emperor

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

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Mandarin tones

1–3–3–2 · che1 shui3 ma3 long2

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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.

車水馬龍 · find source passages ↗ · 车水马龙 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

geoi1 seoi2 maa5 lung4

Cantonese word readings for 車水馬龍. 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 bustling scene of traffic or people flowing through endlessly

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

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