Expressing good luck with "haihao"

幸亏 (xìngkuī), 幸好 (xìnghǎo), and 好在 (hǎozài) mean "fortunately" or "luckily". They can be used to express that something has happened by chance, and has thereby enabled you to avoid some difficulty. It is often used together with 不然.

Structure with 幸亏

It's as simple is adding 幸亏 or 幸好 before the thing that makes you feel lucky. The pattern is:

幸亏/幸好 + accidental reasons

Examples

• 幸亏 我们 走 得 早。Xìngkuī wǒmen zǒu dé zǎo.Luckily, we went early.
• 幸亏 你 在，不然 我 不 知道 该 找 谁。Xìngkuī nǐ zài, bùrán wǒ bù zhīdào gāi zhǎo shuí.Fortunately you were here, otherwise I wouldn't have known who to look for.
• 幸好 今天 带 伞 了，不然 要 淋湿 了。Xìnghǎo jīntiān dài sǎnle, bùrán yào lín shīle.It's a good thing I brought the umbrella. Otherwise, I would have gotten soaked.

Structure with 还好

还好 + accidental reasons

“还好” can also mean “fortunately”, but is more colloquial than 幸好, 幸亏 or 多亏.

Examples

• 还好 我 没 听 他的，不然 我 就 倒霉 了。Hái hǎo wǒ méi tīng tā de, bùrán wǒ jiù dǎoméi le.It's a good thing I didn't listen to him. Otherwise I would have been in for it.
• 还好 我 保存 了，不然 文件 都 丢 了。Hái hǎo wǒ bǎocún le, bùrán wénjiàn dōu diū le.Luckily I saved it, otherwise I would have lost all of the documents.

See also

• "Thanks to" somebody with "duokui"

Sources and further reading

Dictionaries

• 现代汉语词典（第5版） (pp. 1527) →buy