真香zhēn xiāng

So good (eating your words)

zhēn xiāng!真香！So good!

真香 means “it smells so good”. As a meme, it is the line for the moment someone swears they will never do something, then does it and enjoys it.

Took off: 2018
Started in: A reality show
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

It is a joke about changing your mind. You say it about yourself to admit a turn, or about a friend to tease them. People call the pattern 真香定律, “the law of 真香”: the idea that people always break their “never” sooner or later.

How people use it

真香 is now ordinary online Chinese. It works for food, phones, TV shows and apps, anything you once refused.

灯灯

你不是说不喜欢吃榴莲吗？
nǐ bú shì shuō bù xǐ huan chī liú lián ma?
Didn’t you say you don’t like durian?
是啊，太臭了
shì a, tài chòu le
Yeah, it stinks.
那盒子怎么空了？
nà hé zi zěn me kōng le?
Then why is the box empty?
……真香
…… zhēn xiāng
…OK, it’s so good.

More examples

我说不喝奶茶了，结果又买了一杯，真香。
wǒ shuō bù hē nǎi chá le, jié guǒ yòu mǎi le yì bēi, zhēn xiāng.
I said I’d quit milk tea, then I bought another cup. So good.
他以前说不玩这个游戏，现在天天玩，真香！
tā yǐ qián shuō bù wán zhè gè yóu xì, xiàn zài tiān tiān wán, zhēn xiāng!
He used to say he’d never play this game. Now he plays every day.

For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 真香 in the slang dictionary.

Where it came from

The scene comes from 变形计, a Hunan TV reality show in which city teenagers swap lives with children in the countryside. In an episode that aired in June 2014, a teenager sent to a village in Yunnan refused the family’s food and said he would rather starve. Later in the episode he sat down with a bowl of fried rice, ate, and said 真香.

The clip came back in April 2018, when meme-maker apps made it easy to turn the scene into GIFs and stickers. 真香警告, “真香 warning”, became a common reply to anyone who said “never”.

The original. A clip from the show: a teenager at a rural kitchen table eats fried rice, smiles and nods as he says the line. ifeng News tells the story behind it. ifeng News (in Chinese)