大家好 dà  jiā  hǎo ：

How do you say hi in Chinese?

Yes, the easiest would be 你好 nǐ  hǎo, meaning "hi". Everybody knows this I guess. The other day, a Moroccan friend came over to me and wanted to show off the Chinese he learned from his friend, so he said: 你好！你好吗？我很好！

Pronunciation and translation as below:
你好！你好吗？ nǐ  hǎo! nǐ  hǎo ma? (Hi, how are you?)
我很好！wǒ  hěn  hǎo ! (I am very good. or, I am fine.)

I know you might see this in many text books, but to be honest, this is not so natural. You would seldom hear Chinese greet each other like this.

To make it more natural and less cold, you could ask:
你最近好吗？nǐ  zuì  jìn  hǎo  ma? (How have you been recently?)

In this question, zuì  jìn means recently. You brought the question to a time limit and that shows you are really concerned about how has this person been, not just some random question that you don't care about the answer, because you already know the answer would be "I am fine." even that person is having a crisis.

In daily life, Chinese greet each other in many ways:
你吃了吗？nǐ  chī  le ma? (Have you eaten?)
去哪儿啊？qù  nǎ  er a? / 上哪儿去啊？shàng  nǎ  er qù  a? (Where are you going?)
好久不见啊！hǎo  jiǔ  bú  jiàn  a! (I haven't seen you for a while!)
......



There are many different greetings depending on the situation, such as where you meet, what is the relationship between you and this person.

Email me if you want to ask some questions.