City不City
City or not city?
City不City？Is it city?
City不City means “is it city or not?”, with “city” used as an adjective: modern, stylish, fun. 好city means “so cool, so trendy”.
- Took off
- 2024
- Started in
- Travel vlogs
- Today
- Now everyday Chinese
What it means
Chinese often asks a question by putting a word next to its negative: 好不好, 是不是. The meme does the same with an English word, which makes it sound playful.
It started as a question about places, and now it praises anything: a café, an outfit, a plan for the evening.
How people use it
It is still common, though a little worn. Visitors use it in travel videos, and Chinese users use it to tease anything trendy.
我在外滩，你看这个夜景
I’m on the Bund. Look at this view.city不city？
City or not city?超city！
Super city!周末一起来？
Come with me this weekend?必须的！
Obviously!
More examples
这家咖啡店真的好city。
This café is so trendy.
今晚去江边散步，city不city？
A walk by the river tonight. Is that city or what?
Where it came from
It comes from videos by 保保熊, Bao Bao Xiong, an American vlogger who lives in Shanghai. He films himself around China and asks his viewers whether a place is “city不city”. By most accounts, the phrase caught on after a June 2024 video from a trip to the Great Wall, and by July travel videos all over Douyin used it.
咬文嚼字 put city不city fourth on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2024, and the national language monitoring center and 语言文字周报 listed it too.
The original. A travel vlog: a foreign man in Chinese streets and at landmarks asks the camera whether it is city or not. CGTN interviewed him in December 2024. CGTN
Related memes
Sources
- The Paper: the ten phrases of 2024 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
- Language Log on city不city (languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu)
- CGTN interview, December 2024 (news.cgtn.com)
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.
