Chinese Greetings

How to greet someone in Chinese: hello and goodbye, thank you and sorry, the polite 您, and what people actually say instead of good morning.

你好 is correct, and it is not what people say

你好 is the greeting every course opens with and it is not wrong — but between people who know each other it sounds stiff, roughly like greeting a colleague with 'how do you do'. In practice Chinese greetings are situational: 吃了吗？ (have you eaten?), 上班去啊？ (off to work?), or simply the person's name or title. 你好 is for strangers, introductions and the phone.

您 — the polite you, and when it matters

您 is the respectful form of 你, used for people older than you, customers, teachers and officials. It is a single character difference with real weight: 您好 to a shopkeeper's elderly parent is noticed, and 你 to someone who expected 您 is noticed too. Northern China, and Beijing in particular, uses 您 far more than the south.

There is no everyday 'good morning' greeting

早上 is morning and 晚上 is evening, and 早上好 / 晚上好 do exist — but they are formal, closer to broadcast Chinese than to speech. Among friends and family the short 早！ is the normal morning greeting. 晚安 is good night on parting, not a greeting on arrival.

谢谢 and the reply that means the opposite of what it looks like

谢谢 is thank you. The standard replies are 不客气 (don't be polite) and 没关系 (it doesn't matter), the second doubling as 'no problem' after an apology. Among close friends and family, thanking someone for a small thing can sound distancing — the thanks marks the relationship as formal, so its absence between intimates is warmth, not rudeness.

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