We are an independent company with British Directors including a Mandarin-speaking locally resident director and bi- lingual Chinese staff managing the operation and providing the service.

ChinaONEcall is suitable for independent travellers or groups who wish to travel or do business in China without the availability of a tour guide or interpreter. Even for those who are accompanied by a tourguide or interpreter it can be useful for those moments where you want to venture out on your own. For expats and students who have trouble with communication in Mandarin (putonghua) language problems can be a thing of the past.

We accept Visa, Mastercard and PayPal payments in Pound Sterling, US Dollars, Euros and Hong Kong dollars. There are plans to accept more currencies and payment methods in the future.

At the moment we interpret between Chinese (Mandarin) and English. Although Chinese has regional dialects that vary considerably, Mandarin is the lingua franca of China and is understood in all but the most remote places.

Yes, our interpreters are standing by 24/7 to take your call. We would however draw you to our terms and conditions: there may be times occasionally when the service is suspended for short periods for maintenance work for instance.

Yes, this can be done either over the phone or by logging into your account on our website.

The only difference between the packages is the number of minutes included. If you have already purchased a package and wish to add more minutes please do so through our top-up facility.

Pointing at certain words or phrases in a dictionary can be helpful but if the situation requires more than one phrase it can become very frustrating. Chinese words are tricky to pronounce, especially with the correct tone. Chinese dictionaries are notoriously difficult to use (particularly from Chinese to English where you need to know a character’s stroke number and order to find the correct word).

The Chinese mobile network is not yet reliably configured for this and therefore we cannot help in this manner at the present time , but just point to the sign and pass the phone to a local Chinese person who will be able to relay the wording to us.

We are able to arrange this service, please contact us for a quotation.

This is not currently a service we offer.

We endeavour to provide the best service possible. If you don’t feel satisfied for some reason please call or send an email with full particulars to service@chinaONEcall.com and we will do our best to resolve the problem.

We do not count the time spent during administration such as topping up your account, being put on hold, or having your call transferred to another member of staff. One way calls (where you are physically passing your phone between yourself and a 3rd party) are counted in real time. Conference calls have different charges – eg, a 3-way call (where we have to dial a 3rd party) is charged at 1.5x speed

We charge on a per-minute basis. Our initial packages include a registration fee and a number of minutes depending on which package is selected. Further top-ups can be purchased through our site or over the telephone. See tariffs page for more details.

We are keen to impliment a Renminbi (CNY) payment system and are researching ways to do this. Unfortunately we are yet to find a China Unionpay payment gateway that has an English interface. If you are living and working in China and don't have access to a foreign credit card or international Paypal account, it may be worthwhile looking at a dual currency credit card from a Chinese bank. The USD part of the dual currency card is handled by VISA or Mastercard, rather than China Unionpay. In the meantime we are continuing our research but are certainly open to suggestions.

You should be able to pay by credit card directly through Paypal without the need to create a Paypal account. Unfortunately we have discovered that this does not work from every geographic location and this can sometimes include China. We are looking at alternative solutions and expect to have this resolved shortly. There are a number of things you can try although we cannot guarantee they will work (especially if you are in a geographic location that doesn't support direct credit card payments through Paypal). 1) If you see a link on the left hand side of the Paypal page labelled "Continue" please click here. 2) If you know how, please delete the cookies and cache (temporary internet pages) from your browser and then try again (refresh the page or go back). If neither of the above work you may need to create a Paypal account. This process only takes a few minutes and can save you time in future when making online payments for China One Call or other merchants. You can add credit to your paypal account using a credit or debit card and then this credit can be used to pay for China One Call's service. We apologize for the inconvenience, we will endeavour to solve this problem as soon as possible.

This is dependent on the sign-up or top-up package you have purchased. Please see out tariffs page for more details.

Any phone will work . However your network’s roaming charges may apply. If you wish to use a Chinese [or other special ] SIM card to avoid [reduce] roaming charges you need to make sure your phone is unlocked and do try to remember this before you go to the airport! (Please contact your network for further details).