This is the shocking moment a fireball engulfs the face of a man working in a Chinese restaurant as he sparks up his last cigarette from a pack using a faulty lighter.

The incident happened in the city of Chifeng, in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia.

In the video, the man – who is in the restaurant kitchen, wearing an overall – can be seen trying to light a cigarette.

But as soon as he uses a lighter retrieved from his pocket, a huge ball of fire erupts and engulfs his face.

The man jumps back in shock before trying to figure out the reason for the flame by looking around him.

He gives his hair a rub with his right hand after it was apparently singed by the ball of fire.

The wife of the man in the video, identified only as Wu, told local media her husband did not sustain any serious injuries, besides his burned eyebrows and hair.

The reason for the incident is still undetermined and, according to Wu, it could have been caused by the lighter having a gas leak.

The video garnered several comments on Douyin, which is what TikTok is called in China.

Netizen ‘If only as first seen’ wrote: “My husband also encountered it once, when he tried to light a cigarette, the lighter caught fire and almost burned down the house.”

Recently, similar footage was recorded in the city of Zunyi, in the Chinese province of Guizhou.

In the video of that incident, a man can be seen sitting at a table and two other people can be seen at a counter.

The man takes his lighter out, but as he uses it to light a cigarette, a huge fireball erupts, covering his face and causing him to leap back to escape the flames.

The flash of light causes a woman behind the counter to immediately stand up next to her colleague.

Meanwhile, the man with the lighter can be seen using both his hands to check that his eyebrows and hair have not been burned away.