班味
Work smell
我班味好重。I smell of work.
班味, “work smell”, is the tired, flat look and mood that a job leaves on a person: dull eyes, office clothes, no energy, even on the weekend.
- Took off
- 2024
- Started in
- A viral essay
- Today
- Current
What it means
It is not a real smell. It is how you look when work has taken over: people see it in a photo, in how someone walks, in how they talk about the weekend. 去班味, “getting rid of the work smell”, means doing something to feel like yourself again: a trip, a nap, an evening with friends.
How people use it
It is still common, especially among young office workers and new graduates. 你身上的班味好重 is a joke between colleagues, not a compliment.
你看这张照片，我看起来是不是很累？
Look at this photo. Do I look tired?你身上的班味太重了
You totally reek of work.唉，上了一个月的班
Sigh. A whole month of work.周末一起去爬山，去班味！
Let’s go hiking this weekend and shake off the work smell!
More examples
一到周五，我身上的班味就特别重。
By Friday, the work smell on me is really strong.
我想去海边走走，去去班味。
I want to walk by the sea and shake off the work smell.
Where it came from
咬文嚼字 says it spread from a viral essay which said that once you start working, you pick up a 班味 you cannot remove. We have not found the original post or its author.
It became one of the words of 2024. 咬文嚼字 put it seventh on its list of the ten most popular phrases of the year, and the national language monitoring center and 语言文字周报 listed it too.
The original. There is no image; the meme is a phrase. The Paper reported the 2024 list with the magazine’s notes. The Paper (in Chinese)
Related memes
Related slang in the dictionary: 牛马 · 摸鱼
Sources
- The Paper: the ten phrases of 2024 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
- China Writers’ Association on 2024’s words (in Chinese) (chinawriter.com.cn)
Checked November 2026. The picture at the top is our own drawing of 灯灯. It is not the original meme image.
Ten Chinese memes
One Chinese internet meme every three days for a month: where it came from, what it means and how to use it.
