Is 我去广州见朋友 or 我去广州看朋友 better for saying "I go to Guangzhou to see a friend"? In class, the teacher asked us to say:


  I go to Guangzhou to see a friend


in Chinese.  I thought we should say:


  我去广州见朋友
  Wǒ qù Guǎngzhōu jiàn péngyǒu


but the (substitute) teacher proposed：


  我去广州看朋友
  Wǒ qù Guǎngzhōu kàn péngyǒu


I think 见 is more appropriate since it means "to see" in the sense of "to meet", whereas 看 means "to look at", e.g., 看花 (kànhuā) = to look at flowers.

I was corrected on this in the past: I went to an office and said 我想看[她的名字], and I was told that's weird to say, that it sounds like she's a celebrity, and I should say 我想见[她的名字].

However, in addition to the teacher's sentence, the top answer to When to use 看 and 见？ says 见 is inappropriate (you probably will not use 见 as a verb), although it also says it is appropriate (见 can be used as a verb when it means to see/meet someone), so now I'm totally confused, and unsure which is best for this particular context.

Question: Is 我去广州见朋友 or 我去广州看朋友 better for saying "I go to Guangzhou to see a friend"?
In this case, I think 我去广州看朋友 is the suitable translation for "I go to Guangzhou to see a friend"? 我去广州看朋友 usually means you want to see your friend there to see how everything is going with him.

Well, 我去广州见朋友 sounds that you want to meet a friend in Guangzhou, usually for some purposes(like business, talking about something, etc.)