Chinese idiom · 成语
千秋万代
Meaning
A thousand autumns, ten thousand generations; eternity.
Character by character
Origin and story
Traditional figurative expressionThis phrase belongs to a family of expressions that magnify time through enormous numbers of years and generations. An early related form, 千秋万岁, appears in Han Feizi's Xian Xue chapter. There the author discusses ritual specialists who promise people extremely long lives, while observing that the promise cannot demonstrably add even a day to their lifespan.
That skeptical context matters: the ancient passage describes grand wishes without endorsing their effectiveness. The modern expression substitutes generations for years and means age after age, often when speaking of inheritance or remembrance. The cited precursor does not establish the earliest occurrence of the exact wording 千秋万代.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
我们希望这些民间故事能传给后人，流传千秋万代。
We hope these folktales can be passed on to future generations and endure through the ages.
Elevated and deliberately expansive; numbers are not literal counts.