How to use 好不容易
Subject + 好不容易 / 好容易 + (才 +) Result
好不容易 emphasizes the difficulty involved in reaching a result. Before a predicate, it presents success as something achieved only after effort, delay, or repeated attempts. 才 often reinforces that the result did not come easily. The expression is useful when explaining why a completed achievement matters or why losing its benefit is especially frustrating.
In this idiomatic use, 好容易 can also convey hard-won success, although 好不容易 is more transparent and common. Do not interpret every occurrence of 好容易 as difficult: an ordinary description with the right context can mean very easy. Read the full sentence, particularly the presence of 才 and the account of effort, to establish which meaning is intended.
Examples with pinyin and English
她好容易才减肥成功。
She had a hard time losing weight and succeeded.
我好不容易才打通了银行的服务热线。
It was no easy task to get through to the bank's customer service hotline.
我们好不容易才做完这个项目，结果合同取消了。
It was with great difficulty that we finally finished this project. But then the contract was canceled.
我好不容易才到市中心， 发现没带手机，只好回去拿。
It was a lot of trouble to get to the city center, but then I realized I had forgotten my cell phone and had to go back and get it.
What to remember
- 好不容易 highlights effort or difficulty.
- 才 often precedes the hard-won result.
- Interpret 好容易 from context rather than characters alone.
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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.
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