How to Say Nice to Meet You in Chinese: 很高兴认识你 and 幸会

By Ray Banks·September 30, 2026·Phrases

"Nice to meet you" in Chinese is 很高兴认识你 (很高興認識你), pronounced hěn gāoxìng rènshi nǐ. It works in every situation, in Mainland China and Taiwan alike, and nobody will ever think it odd. What the textbooks leave out is the register above and below it: 幸会 (幸會) xìnghuì for a formal or old-school introduction, 请多指教 (請多指教) qǐng duō zhǐjiào when you join a team, and the reply, which is not a repeat of the phrase but a short 我也是 wǒ yě shì. Get those four and you can be introduced to anyone.

What is the standard way to say nice to meet you in Chinese?

很高兴认识你, and it comes in two word orders that mean the same thing. 很高兴认识你 puts the feeling first ("very glad to know you"); 认识你很高兴 rènshi nǐ hěn gāoxìng puts the meeting first ("knowing you, I'm very glad"). Both are completely natural, and you will hear both from native speakers in the same conversation. The second order is a little more measured, the first a little more spontaneous. Pick whichever comes out.

Two small upgrades make it fit any room. Replace 你 with 您 nín when the other person is older, senior, or a client. Add 也 yě ("also") when you are replying: 我也很高兴认识你. That is the whole system for ordinary life.

How do you say nice to meet you formally?

At a business dinner, a formal introduction, or when meeting someone with real seniority, Chinese has a register above 很高兴认识你. The phrases here are shorter, older, and carry a hint of the classical language. Used well, they are impressive. Used in the wrong setting, they sound like a costume.

A word on 幸会. Learners love it because it is short and sounds sophisticated, and then they use it at a language exchange, where it lands like "enchanted" in English. Native speakers on both sides of the strait describe it as formal and a bit 老派 lǎopài, old school. It is perfect for meeting your partner's grandfather or a company chairman. For everyone else, 很高兴认识你 is not the beginner option, it is the correct one.

What do you say when you join a new team or class?

Chinese has a phrase for this specific moment that English lacks: you have just been introduced to a group you will work or study with, and you want to say "please be patient with me, I'm new." The two versions split regionally.

请多指教 has an interesting history. It is a native Chinese expression, but its heavy use as an introduction formula in Taiwan is usually linked to Japanese yoroshiku onegaishimasu, which does the same job and which Taiwanese translators rendered as 請多多指教. Mainland speakers understand it perfectly and use it in formal settings, but 多多关照 tends to come out more naturally there. Neither is wrong anywhere; this is about what you will hear, not what you may say.

Which "nice to meet you" should I use? A comparison table

Mistakes to avoid

Five errors that mark a learner in the first thirty seconds of a conversation, which is unfortunate timing.

• Saying 很高兴见到你 to someone you've just met. 见到 jiàndào is "to see, to catch sight of." 很高兴见到你 means "good to see you," and it implies you already know the person. For a first meeting the verb is 认识 rènshi, "to become acquainted." Mixing them up is the single most common error on this phrase.
• Translating "meet" as 遇到 or 见面. 遇到 yùdào is "to run into" (by chance), and 见面 jiànmiàn is "to meet up" (an arranged meeting). Neither means "to make someone's acquaintance." 很高兴遇到你 sounds like you are glad you bumped into each other, which is a different sentence.
• Using 幸会 at a language exchange. It is formal and old-fashioned. Between people in their twenties at a casual event it sounds like a line from a costume drama. Keep it for elders and formal business.
• Repeating the whole phrase back word for word. Grammatically fine, but the reply that native speakers give is 我也是 or 我也很高兴认识你, with 也. A verbatim echo sounds like a classroom drill.
• Flattening the tones on 很高兴. 很 is third tone, 高 first, 兴 fourth: hěn gāo-xìng, a dip, a high flat, a fall. The trap is 兴, which has two readings: xīng (first tone) in 兴奋 xīngfèn "excited," and xìng (fourth tone) in 高兴 and 兴趣 xìngqù "interest." Learners often let it rise or float; it should drop. Since this is a phrase you will say constantly, it is worth drilling. The pinyin guide covers tone pairs like this one.

What do the characters in 很高兴认识你 actually mean?

Six characters, and every one of them is a workhorse you will use in a hundred other sentences.

高兴 gāoxìng is "high spirits": 高 "high" plus 兴, which in this reading means mood or interest. It is the everyday word for "happy, glad." 认识 rènshi combines 认 "to recognise" and 识 "to know," and it means to know a person or to recognise a character. When someone asks 你认识他吗？ they mean "do you know him?"; when you say 我认识这个字 you mean "I can read this character." The same verb covers meeting a person and learning a hanzi, which tells you something about how the language thinks about acquaintance.

Notice too what the sentence doesn't need. There is no 我 "I" at the front (it is understood), no 是 "to be" (Chinese adjectives don't take one), and 很 is doing less work than "very" suggests. In Chinese, a bare adjective often sounds like a comparison, so 很 is added to make it a plain statement. 我高兴 can imply "I'm the happy one (unlike you)"; 我很高兴 just means "I'm happy." The Chinese grammar guide covers this 很 rule and why it trips up almost everyone.

幸会 breaks down to 幸 xìng "fortunate, lucky" (as in 幸运 xìngyùn) and 会 huì "to meet" (as in 开会 kāihuì, "to hold a meeting"). "A fortunate meeting," compressed to two syllables. That compression is exactly why it sounds formal: modern spoken Chinese prefers two-character words strung into longer phrases, and a two-syllable sentence has the ring of the classical language.

How first meetings actually go in Chinese

The honest cultural note is that the phrase is less central than English speakers expect. In a Chinese introduction the weight falls on who is introducing you and on the form of address that follows, not on the pleasantry. A mutual friend says 这是我同事小李 ("this is my colleague Xiao Li"), you say 你好 and 很高兴认识你, and then the real work begins: establishing what to call each other (王经理? 李老师? 小陈?), exchanging WeChat or LINE, and finding a connection (same hometown, same university, same industry). A Chinese first meeting is a search for 关系 guānxi, a thread that ties you together, and the phrases in this post are the polite noise around that search.

This is also why the reply matters more than the opener. 我也是 said warmly, with eye contact and a real handshake, does more than a perfectly pronounced 幸会. And it is why 以后多联系 ("let's stay in touch") is such a common close: it says the meeting is the start of something, which is the point. Between Mainland and Taiwan the ritual is the same in outline. Taiwan leans on 請多指教 and adds LINE rather than WeChat; the Mainland leans on 多多关照 and 您. For a fuller picture of the whole exchange, see how to introduce yourself in Chinese.

See the pieces of this phrase in real stories

None of our free browser stories happens to contain the full sentence 很高兴认识你, so I won't pretend one does. But the parts are everywhere, and meeting them separately is how the phrase stops being a memorised lump.

• What's Your Name? is the first-meeting dialogue at its simplest: 你好！你叫什么？ 我叫约翰. It is the exchange that comes right before 很高兴认识你, and a good place to see how sparse a Chinese introduction can be.
• The Boss' Praise has 高兴 in its natural habitat: 小郭 is embarrassed by a compliment 但他心里很高兴, "but inside he was very happy." Same 很高兴, different object.

There are hundreds more short texts at every level in the Chinese reading practice library, and the whole thing in Traditional characters, with 很高興認識你 written the way Taiwan writes it, in our Traditional reading practice collection.

How common are these characters, really?

Measured across the 658 graded stories in the Literate Chinese catalog (141,730 hanzi occurrences, July 2026), 你 is the 18th most frequent character, 很 the 19th, 会 the 42nd, and 见 the 86th. 高, 兴, 认, and 识 do not make our top 150 individually, but that is misleading about the words: 高兴 and 认识 are among the first two-character words any course teaches, and both appear in our beginner stories. The takeaway is that 很高兴认识你 is built from material you will meet in the first week, which is one reason it is the phrase to learn rather than 幸会.