Asking "How are you?" in Chinese

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For friends or family:

For strangers or more senior persons:

What do you say if someone asks you one of these questions?

A common follow-up question is, “And you?”, Nǐ zěn me yàng？ (你 怎 么 样)  or in short and informal terms nǐ ne？(你 呢)

If someone tells you that he or she is not feeling well you could say the following…

If someone is feeling great you might want to say the following…

It is true that in most languages in the world, when people hear some bad news from friends, they normally say “I’m sorry”, e.g. to someone who is sick. Yet in Chinese, people only say the phrase “I’m sorry” when they have done something wrong.

It is still important to know how to say it in Chinese, because everybody makes mistakes, don’t they? Some people even believe that the most important phrase in any language is how to say you’re sorry! Others disagree. They say that there are THREE important phrases that you absolutely must know in any language. They are:

Hmm, I can’t think of a situation in which I’d need to use all three, but I’ll leave it to your imagination! That’s it for today’s lesson.

Lin Ping
Rocket Chinese

P.S. Here is a little exercise for you to test your Chinese skills.

Exercise 1. Pretend that you are meeting a friend of yours named wáng yuè (王 月). Respond in Chinese to the questions below. (There’s not a single right answer.)

Translation: