King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “career”

生涯
shēng yá
career; life (way in which sb lives); period of one's life

The closest CC-CEDICT match for career is 生涯 (shēng yá), defined as: career; life (way in which sb lives); period of one's life.

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

生 shēng
life, lifetime; birth; growth
radical 100 ⽣ · 5 strokes
涯 yá
border, horizon; river bank, shore
radical 85 ⽔ · 11 strokes

Other Chinese words for “career”

WordPinyinMeaning
职涯 (職涯)zhí yácareer
事业 (事業)shì yèundertaking; project

Related words

Other words that share a character with 生涯.

WordPinyinMeaning
发生 (發生)fā shēngto happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 (fā shēng wèn tí) "a problem arises")
生活shēng huóto live; life
学生 (學生)xué shengstudent; schoolchild
生产 (生產)shēng chǎnto produce; to manufacture; to give birth to a child
产生 (產生)chǎn shēngto arise; to come into being; to come about; to give rise to; to bring into being; to bring about; to produce; to engender; to generate
先生xiān shengteacher; gentleman; sir; mister (Mr.)
天涯tiān yáthe other end of the world; a faraway place
天涯海角tiān yá hǎi jiǎothe ends of the earth; separated worlds apart

See also: Japanese symbol for “career”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.

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