How to Say Excuse Me in Chinese: 不好意思, 请问, and 借过

By Ray Banks·September 27, 2026·Phrases

"Excuse me" in Chinese is 不好意思, pronounced bù hǎoyìsi, if you want one phrase that works nearly everywhere. But English "excuse me" is really three different requests wearing the same words, and Chinese gives each its own phrase: 不好意思 to get someone's attention or interrupt, 请问 (請問) qǐngwèn to open a question, and 借过 (借過) jièguò in Taiwan or 让一下 (讓一下) ràng yīxià on the Mainland to get past someone. Once you stop looking for a single translation, the whole thing becomes easy.

Why does "excuse me" need three phrases in Chinese?

Because in English the phrase is doing three unrelated things and we have stopped noticing. "Excuse me" to a waiter is a summons. "Excuse me, where is the station?" is a question opener. "Excuse me" on a crowded train is a physical request to move. Chinese keeps those separate, and each has its own natural wording.

The trick is to ask yourself what you actually want. Attention? Information? Space? The answer tells you the phrase.

How do you say excuse me to get someone's attention?

This is the summons: flagging staff, stopping a passer-by, breaking into a conversation. 不好意思 owns this job, but there are a few companions worth knowing, and one regional split in restaurants.

The restaurant case is the one worth practising because it is where regional habits diverge most visibly. A Mainland diner calls 服务员 across the room without a second thought. A Taiwanese diner catches an eye, raises a hand, and says 不好意思. Do the Mainland thing in Taipei and you will be served, but you will also be noticed. Our app swaps 服务员 and 服務生 for you depending on which Mandarin you are studying, one of 89 regional word pairs it tracks.

How do you say excuse me before asking a question?

请问 qǐngwèn is the phrase, and it has one rule: it must be followed by the question. 请 is "please" (really "to request"), 问 is "to ask," and together they mean "may I ask." It is not an apology, so it never stands alone.

Notice the division of labour. 请问 asks for information, 麻烦你 asks for action, 不好意思 clears the ground for either. You will frequently hear all three chained: 不好意思，麻烦你，请问这个多少钱？

How do you say excuse me to get past someone?

This is the case with the sharpest Mainland and Taiwan split, and it is the one you will need most on the subway.

If you can't remember which region you are in, 不好意思 plus a sideways step works everywhere, and a raised hand does half the talking. But if you want to sound local, take 借過 to Taipei and 让一下 to Shanghai.

How do you say excuse me when leaving, or when you didn't hear?

Two more English "excuse me"s that Chinese handles with entirely different phrases. Neither uses 不好意思 alone, and getting them right removes a lot of awkward pauses.

Which "excuse me" should I use? A comparison table

Mistakes to avoid

These are the errors I hear most, in roughly the order learners make them.

• Using 对不起 as "excuse me." 对不起 duì bu qǐ is a real apology that admits fault. Said to a stranger you want to walk past, it is like announcing "I have wronged you." Older Mainland textbooks did teach 对不起 as an attention-getter, and you will still hear it from some older speakers, but 不好意思 is what people say now. The full distinction is in how to say sorry in Chinese.
• Saying 请问 and stopping. 请问 is a runway, not a phrase. If you say it and then pause to assemble your question, the listener is left hanging. Have the question ready, or use 不好意思 to buy the pause instead.
• Using 借过 in Beijing or 劳驾 in Taipei. Both will be understood, and neither is rude, but each marks you as having learned the other Mandarin. If you don't know which you are in, 不好意思 and a step sideways is regionally neutral.
• Over-pronouncing 不好意思. It is not four evenly stressed syllables. In speech, 意思 collapses to a light yìsi, and the whole thing runs together: bù hǎo yìsi, with the weight on 好. Robotic delivery makes it sound sarcastic. The pinyin guide covers neutral tone, which is the key to this one.
• Treating 不好意思 as only "excuse me." It is also an adjective meaning "embarrassed," and that sense is arguably more common in text: 他有点不好意思 is "he was a bit embarrassed," not "he was a bit excuse me." Knowing both senses stops you misreading stories, as you'll see below.

What do the characters in 不好意思 actually mean?

Four characters, all of them among the first you learn, combining into a meaning none of them has alone. That is why it is worth taking apart once.

意思 yìsi is "meaning" (这是什么意思？ "what does this mean?"), but 好意思 hǎo yìsi is a set phrase meaning "to have the nerve, to have the face to do something." 你好意思吗？ is a genuinely sharp question: "aren't you ashamed?" Negate it and 不好意思 is "I don't quite have the face for this," which is why it reads as mild embarrassment. And embarrassment is exactly the feeling of interrupting a stranger, asking a favour, or squeezing past someone. The phrase names the feeling, and that acknowledgement is the courtesy.

请问 qǐngwèn is 请 "to request, please" (請 in Traditional, with the speech radical 言 on the left) plus 问 "to ask" (問, a mouth 口 inside a door 門: a question at the door). 借过 is 借 "to borrow" plus 过 "to pass" (過), so "let me borrow a way past," which is a lovely piece of politeness once you see it. 让 ràng (讓) is "to yield, to let," the same 让 as in 让我看看 "let me see." And 劳驾 is 劳 "to trouble, to labour" (勞) plus 驾 "carriage" (駕), a fossilised courtesy from when asking someone to move meant asking them to move their cart. The Chinese grammar guide has more on 一下 and why adding it to a verb makes a request lighter.

Why Chinese has no single "excuse me"

Here is the honest cultural note. English "excuse me" is a formula that lets you touch a stranger's attention without owing them anything. Chinese politeness works less through formulas and more through acknowledging the relationship in the moment: the waiter is addressed by role (服务员, 老板), the stranger by a small admission of imposition (不好意思, 麻烦你), the person in your way by a request to yield (让一下, 借过). Each phrase says what you want and what you know it costs the other person. That is why there is no one word, and it is also why 不好意思 has spread so far: it names the cost ("this is a bit awkward for me") without specifying the request, so it fits almost anywhere.

The regional texture follows from the same logic. Taiwan's service culture runs on 不好意思 to a degree that surprises Mainland visitors, who sometimes describe Taiwanese speech as apologising constantly. Mainland speech, especially in the north, is more direct with strangers: 让一下, 服务员, 劳驾, no preamble. Neither is ruder. They simply put the politeness in different places, and if you learn both you can adjust in real time, which is a more useful skill than any single phrase. Taiwan Mandarin vs Mainland Mandarin goes deeper on where the two varieties part ways.

See these phrases in real stories

The clearest way to learn the two faces of 不好意思 is to meet both in context. Three free stories in our browser reader, tap-to-look-up on every word:

• After Arriving at the Office: 小郭 is late again, and his colleague teases him. 小郭不好意思地笑了笑, "he smiled sheepishly." That is 不好意思 as an adverb of embarrassment, the sense the "excuse me" translation hides.
• The Boss' Praise: praised in a meeting, 小郭有点不好意思，但他心里很高兴. Embarrassed but pleased. Read it once and you will never mistranslate the adjective again.
• The Lion and the Mouse: the lion roars 你竟敢打扰我！ "How dare you disturb me!" It is 打扰 in the raw, without the softening 一下 and 不好意思 that turn it into a polite interruption.

More stories at every level in our Chinese reading practice library, and the same texts in Traditional characters in the Traditional reading practice collection, which is where you will see 請問 and 借過 as they are written in Taiwan.

How common are these characters, really?

Measured across the 658 graded stories in the Literate Chinese catalog (141,730 hanzi occurrences, July 2026), the building blocks of "excuse me" are all high-frequency: 不 is the 8th most common character, 好 the 24th, 问 the 69th, 打 the 93rd, 意 the 136th, and 让 the 137th. 请 does not make our top 150, which says something about the gap between spoken formulas and narrative text: you say 请问 a dozen times a day in a Chinese city, but a story rarely needs it. That is a good argument for learning these phrases as spoken chunks first, and letting reading reinforce the characters afterwards.