King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

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

生 shēng
life, lifetime; birth; growth
radical 100 ⽣ · 5 strokes
活 huó
to exist, to live, to survive; living, working
radical 85 ⽔ · 9 strokes

Other Chinese words for “live”

WordPinyinMeaning
住zhùto live; to reside; to stay; to stop; to cease
活huóto live; alive
实况 (實況)shí kuànglive (e.g. broadcast or recording); what is actually happening
过 (過)guòto cross; to go over
住居zhù jūto live; to reside

Related words

Other words that share a character with 生活.

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")
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.)
活动 (活動)huó dòngto exercise; to move about; to work out; shaky; unsteady; loose (tooth etc)
活跃 (活躍)huó yuèactive; lively
活着 (活著)huó zhealive

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.

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