please don,t put the "hi" before the "how are you?". how are you ? in mandarin include "hi" s meaning, and the "hi" is rude in mandarin. when you meet a chinese friend,say "how are you recently?" firsthand.

Lucinda is right in my opinion.I'm in Zhejiang province too.

FINE really ? hi in guangzhou is a rude expression ? in the mainland , at least in zhejiang province hi is also a friendly greeting i will greet the peopel in far distance with waving hands and hi .and we use hou are you recently when i not met a man for a long time :) whether add a hi or not is ok :)

haha they are the same ,but i usually use hi to get other's attention(i my opinion hi mean nothing in chinese) , then greeting them how are you recently :) hope it help :)

Hi is equvilent to "Hai" in pinyin. One thing I wanna point out is that we really don't ask how are you as often as it in English.