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I have just entered the bus going from a small city Horsens to Copenhagen (in Denmark). It's so full like an unopened bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I keep on walking slowly, scanning through my glasses for a place. And suddenly...

A warm welcoming SMILE out of nowhere catches my attention. It's hers. And she has one spot. I come closer, middle of the bus, and say: "Sorry, can I take that seat?" She immediately replies: "Oh, yeah, sure." with an accent that doesn't seem Danish.

From her look, she is clearly an Asian. I thought for a minute or two and decided to go with two options. She is either from 1. Japan or 2. China. How do you distinguish Japanese from Chinese? Hm... So I turned on my intuition and felt China, undoubtedly.

My voice runs through my mind pushing: "Let's give it a try!" So I open Google translate on my phone, type in "Hi, how are you?" and translate it into Chinese. I listen via my right headphone several times until I was confident to say it. I am READY, here it goes...

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I turn to her and say: "Nǐ hǎo nǐ hǎo ma?" She starts to laugh! Almost crying. I was confused for a moment but then started laughing together. We connected. The same frequency. The frequency of spontaneous friendship and laugh. After ~34 seconds, she says: "That was so unexpected, I love it, so cute!"

Those 3 and a half hours went like minutes. A GREAT new friendship. The power of "Hi, how are you?" works. You just have to do a little practice to prepare and say it in their language.