烟火气
The feel of everyday life
好有烟火气！So full of life!
烟火气 is the warm, busy feel of ordinary life: food stalls, steam from a pot, people chatting at a market. Saying a place 有烟火气 is high praise.
- Took off
- 2022
- Started in
- An old word for cooking smoke
- Today
- Now everyday Chinese
What it means
Word by word it is “smoke-fire air”: 烟火 is the smoke and fire of cooking, and 气 is air or atmosphere. Its old meaning was the smell of food cooking. On its own, 烟火 can also mean fireworks, but not here.
Today it means life that feels lively and real. A night market, a noodle shop full of regulars and a street of breakfast stalls all 有烟火气. A new mall with empty shops does not.
How people use it
It is now everyday Chinese. You see it in food videos and travel posts, and you can use it for a street, a home or a person: 他身上有烟火气 means he feels down-to-earth.
晚上去哪里吃？
Where should we eat tonight?去夜市吧，我想吃烤串
Let’s go to the night market. I want grilled skewers.好！夜市最有烟火气了
Yes! Night markets feel the most alive.而且便宜
And they’re cheap.
More examples
这条小吃街特别有烟火气。
This snack street is so full of life.
我喜欢早上的菜市场，很有烟火气。
I love the food market in the morning. It feels so alive.
Where it came from
The word comes from classical Chinese. 咬文嚼字 put it on its list of the ten popular phrases of 2022 and noted the change in meaning, from the smell of cooking to the feel of lively everyday life.
A year later, in December 2023, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center ranked it second among the internet phrases of 2023.
The original. No single post started it. The Paper’s report on the 2023 list explains the phrase. The Paper (in Chinese)
Related memes
Sources
- The Paper: the internet phrases of 2023 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
- The Paper: 咬文嚼字’s phrases of 2022 (in Chinese) (thepaper.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.
