A common expression used by Chinese people is 我先走了 (Wǒ xiān zǒu le). Literally translated it means “I am leaving first”. This typical way of saying good-bye is used when leaving a group earlier than others. It is kind of like “I gotta get going”. Listen to the exchange below by clicking on first column. To check out the vocabulary click on the Chinese characters.

	Pinyin	Chinese	English
	Wǒ xiān zǒu le	我先走了	I’ll go first.
	Hǎo de. Míngtiān jiàn	好的。明天见	Okay. See you tomorrow.

Vocabulary

	Pinyin	English
我	wǒ	I,me
先	xiān	first
走	zǒu	go
了	le	now
好的	Hǎo de	okay
明天	Míngtiān	tomorrow
见	jiàn	meet

  The word 了 (le) has several meanings, in this situation it indicates a “change of state”. In this case, the thing that changed is staying vs leaving. The best translation is “now”, but it is still not quite right.

 

Bonus Video

In this youtube video a musician introduces his song, titled “我先走了”. During the first 40 seconds he repeats the phrase at least 4 times.