Skip to content
Mythic Mandarin

长生不老 (cháng shēng bù lǎo): meaning and stroke order

长生不老 (cháng shēng bù lǎo) means (idiom) to live forever and never grow old.

长生不老

Simplified
长生不老
Traditional
長生不老
Pinyin
cháng shēng bù lǎo

Stroke order of 长生不老

长

  • cháng long; (bound form) length
  • zhǎng chief; head
  • 4 strokes
  • Traditional form: 長

Stroke by stroke

生

  • shēng to be born; to give birth
  • 5 strokes

Stroke by stroke

不

  • bù no; not so; (bound form) not; un-
  • 4 strokes

Stroke by stroke

老

  • lǎo prefix used before the surname of a person or a numeral indicating the order of birth of the children in a family or to indicate affection or familiarity; old (of people)
  • 6 strokes

Stroke by stroke

Meaning of 长生不老

  1. cháng shēng bù lǎo Traditional 長生不老
    • (idiom) to live forever and never grow old

Radicals of the characters

长
Radical 长 (Kangxi radical 168) in its simplified form · 4 strokes
生
Radical 生 (Kangxi radical 100) · 5 strokes · built from 𠂉 and 土
不
Radical 一 (Kangxi radical 1) · 4 strokes · built from 丆 and 卜
老
Radical 老 (Kangxi radical 125) · 6 strokes · 耂 on top, 匕 below

Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan database. Structure: the shapes a character is written with (BabelStone IDS), not necessarily parts that carry meaning or sound.

长生不老 in our stories

Preview version — Chinese review in progress.

  • 王母娘娘送给他一包药，吃了就能长生不老，飞到天上去。

    Wángmǔ Niángniang sònggěi tā yì bāo yào chī le jiù néng chángshēng bù lǎo fēi dào tiān shàng qù

    The Queen Mother of the West gave him a packet of medicine: whoever took it would never grow old and would fly up to heaven.

    From the story Chang'e flies to the moon HSK 3

  • 这个姑娘其实是白骨精变的，她听说吃了唐僧的肉就能长生不老。

    zhè gè gūniang qíshí shì Báigǔjīng biàn de tā tīngshuō chī le Táng Sēng de ròu jiù néng chángshēng bù lǎo

    The woman was really the White Bone Demon in disguise: she had heard that eating Tang Seng's flesh would make her immortal.

    From the story Monkey strikes the White Bone Demon three times HSK 6

Stories using 长生不老

Dictionary data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Stroke data: Hanzi Writer data, derived from Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License). Animation: Hanzi Writer (MIT licence). Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan (Unicode License v3).