Authentic Greetings in Chinese

From our online Chinese lessons, we know there are many ways to make greetings when people meet. However, the ways to greet may vary according to different situations.

How do you greet a new friend? If you want to start a conversation with a person that you have never met before, you usually say 你好, or you can use 您好 to show your respect. It is usually common to add很高兴认识你 “Glad to meet you.” after that. This way of greetings is often used in circumstances such as business activity, a social party, etc.

If you meet a friend that you are not quite familiar with, you are supposed to say 早上好“Good morning?”, 下午好“Good afternoon?”,  晚上好“Good evening?”, 你好吗“how are you?” etc. to greet each other in a friendly way. Sometimes, they will say those greetings with a hug.

However, Chinese people greet each other in quite a different way when if they know each other well. And if you’re a foreigner, you’ll find it quite interesting by this very authentic way. If you have ever been to China, you’ll find some interesting greetings. Usually, when Chinese people meet on the way, they will say “Where are you going?” nin2 qu4 na3 （您去哪？）, “Have you had your meal?” chi1 le5 ma5（吃了吗？）, or “Are you going to the street?” shang4 jie1 ya5（上街呀？）etc. To many people who are learning basic Chinese, these greetings are questions about privacy and they are quite confused.

To put it in a nutshell, different greetings in China, Britain and the U.S. owns to different cultures. British and American people may not enjoy greetings in China because they think they are too specific and individual. While Chinese people won’t use British and American greetings for the ones they greet would feel they are not being familiar, especially people in rural areas.

Having said that, as we learn Chinese, we should not confuse us by asking “why did they greet each in this seemingly weird way.” Chinese is a language, and we should not learn it like it’s mathematics, right?