香格里拉

Mandarin · pinyin Xiāng gé lǐ lā

Meanings

  1. Shangri-la, the beautiful, idyllic land of James Hilton's 1933 novel "Lost Horizon"; a paradise on earth
  2. see 香格里拉市 Xiāng gé lǐ lā Shì
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Characters in this entry

香
xiāng · fragrant, sweet-smelling; incense; Kangxi radical 186
格
gé · pattern, standard, form; style
里
lǐ · unit of distance; village; lane; Kangxi radical 166
拉
lā · pull, drag; seize, hold; lengthen
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

1–2–3–1 · Xiang1 ge2 li3 la1

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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.

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 3 senses

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

name

  1. Shangri-La
  2. (~市) Shangri-La City (a county-level city of Diqing prefecture, Yunnan, China)
  3. (~鎮) Xianggelila (a town in Daocheng, Garzê prefecture, Sichuan, China)

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

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

香格里拉 · Xiang1 ge2 li3 la1
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 120,492
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record香格里拉 香格里拉 [Xiang1 ge2 li3 la1] /Shangri-la, the beautiful, idyllic land of James Hilton's 1933 novel "Lost Horizon"; a paradise on earth/see 香格里拉市[Xiang1 ge2 li3 la1 Shi4]/