打工人
Working stiff
早安，打工人！Morning, workers!
打工人 is what Chinese employees call themselves, with a wry smile: anyone who works for someone else to pay the bills. The greeting 早安，打工人, “good morning, workers”, made it one of the words of 2020.
- Took off
- 2020
- Started in
- Short videos
- Today
- Now everyday Chinese
What it means
打工 means to work for a boss, often in a job you did not choose. In the 1980s and 1990s it described migrant workers in factories. The meme applied it to everyone: programmers, bankers, interns.
It is self-mocking and friendly. When you say 打工人, you count yourself among everyone who has to get up for work.
How people use it
It is now an everyday word, and the morning greeting is still a running joke in group chats. Later words for the same feeling are 牛马, a beast of burden, and 吗喽, a tired monkey.
打工人，起床了没？
Hey, worker, are you up yet?起了，在等地铁
Yep. Waiting for the subway.我也是，今天又要加班
Me too. Overtime again today.打工人太难了
Being a worker is so hard.
More examples
早安，打工人！今天也要加油。
Good morning, workers! Let’s get through today too.
打工人的周末就是补觉。
A worker’s weekend is for catching up on sleep.
For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 打工人 in the slang dictionary.
Where it came from
The joke took off in October 2020. Short videos and posts greeted each workday with 早安，打工人 and a cheerful line about suffering, and a slogan formed around it: 打工人，打工魂，打工都是人上人, roughly “workers, worker spirit, workers rise above everyone”. Xinhua dates the spread to a video of 22 September in which a young man says good morning to everyone on his way to work.
咬文嚼字 put 打工人 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2020, next to 内卷 and 凡尔赛文学.
The original. There is no single image. The typical post is a sunrise photo or a cartoon with the words 早安，打工人！ The China Project explained the word in November 2020. The China Project
Related memes
Related slang in the dictionary: 牛马 · 社畜 · 摸鱼
Sources
- Xinhua: the ten phrases of 2020 (in Chinese) (xinhuanet.com)
- The China Project: ten words that defined 2020 (thechinaproject.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.
