Chinese symbol for “live”
生活
shēng huó
to live; life; livelihood
The closest CC-CEDICT match for live is 生活 (shēng huó), defined as: to live; life; livelihood.
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
Other Chinese words for “live”
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 住 | zhù | to live; to reside; to stay; to stop; to cease |
| 活 | huó | to live; alive |
| 实况 (實況) | shí kuàng | live (e.g. broadcast or recording); what is actually happening |
| 过 (過) | guò | to cross; to go over |
| 住居 | zhù jū | to live; to reside |
Related words
Other words that share a character with 生活.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 发生 (發生) | fā shēng | to happen; to occur; to take place; to arise (e.g. 发生问题 (fā shēng wèn tí) "a problem arises") |
| 学生 (學生) | xué sheng | student; schoolchild |
| 生产 (生產) | shēng chǎn | to produce; to manufacture; to give birth to a child |
| 产生 (產生) | chǎn shēng | to 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 sheng | teacher; gentleman; sir; mister (Mr.) |
| 活动 (活動) | huó dòng | to exercise; to move about; to work out; shaky; unsteady; loose (tooth etc) |
| 活跃 (活躍) | huó yuè | active; lively |
| 活着 (活著) | huó zhe | alive |
See also: Japanese symbol for “live”.
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.