Cultural note:

The common greeting of 「How are you?」 or 「你好嗎」？ (ni hao ma) is perhaps the text book standard greeting. However by no means is it the only means of greeting, and certainly not the most personal, affectionate, intimate, or heartfelt form of a standard public greeting.

To illustrate my point let us look at the origins of the word for 「happiness」 福 (fu).
http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE7ZdicA6Zdic8F.htm
It begins with the 礻radical where the small horizontal stroke on top represents 「heaven」 or 「that which is above one's head」 and the 3 vertical strokes represent, depending on interpretation either heaven, earth, and man, or, 3 sticks of incense, in both cases for worship of the Heavens/Supreme/God/etc. Next on the right on the bottom we have 田 or 「rice field」 「grain field」 etc, and above it we have a full grain storage warehouse. So this gives the meaning and concept of happiness. What is happiness? A full stomach and an abundance of food.

Any city that has been under siege throughout history is quickly reminded that you cannot eat dollar bills, no matter the currency. In the words of Kuatilya aka Chanakya 「there is no wealth like grains」.

Which brings back to our topic, an affectionate, personal, intimate, standard public and widely used greeting.

Rather than the text book 「How are you?」 or 「你好嗎？」 (ni hao ma) which everyone knows and is perhaps too formal, superficial, distant, and plastic, what is more authentically Chinese is the warm greeting of 「Have you eaten?」 or 「吃飽了嗎？」 (chi bao le ma). This is widely used and appropriate even for complete strangers, but being so affectionate in nature may catch a complete stranger off guard for a moment, before they quickly warm to you.

The magic of this phrase is not technical, or linguistic. What is so intimate about this phrase it that it is human, heartfelt, and shows real concern. It is perhaps the Chinese equivalent of the English looking someone directly in the eyes and saying 「How are you? Are you well?」 and really meaning it, while waiting for a real reply.