How to use 怎么样
⋯⋯怎么样？
怎么样 asks what something is like or how it is going. The topic or subject comes before it, and the listener supplies a description or assessment. A time expression can narrow the question to someone's recent condition or the situation in a particular period. The form leaves the answer relatively open.
To request an opinion explicitly, a phrase with 觉得 can introduce the person making the judgment before the topic and 怎么样. This asks for an evaluation rather than a method of performing an action. Distinguish that function from 怎么 before a verb, which often asks how to do something. In conversation, 怎么样 can also check whether a proposed option seems acceptable in the context.
Examples with pinyin and English
你最近怎么样？
How have you been recently?
中国怎么样？
How is China?
北京冬天怎么样？
How is Beijing in the winter?
今天天气怎么样？
How is the weather today?
What to remember
- Put the topic before 怎么样.
- Use 觉得 when explicitly requesting an opinion.
- Distinguish evaluation from asking for a method.
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Source and editorial notes
Explanation rewritten for Laowai. Examples are adapted from the Laowai English grammar curriculum, with editorial corrections where needed. The original curriculum credits AllSet Learning’s Chinese Grammar Wiki as used with permission. Read the retained source credits.
Difficulty labels describe the level of the explanation; they are not official HSK placement. Send a correction with this page’s URL.