About 17Talk

17Talk is an independent Chinese-learning site for English speakers who are going to China, or who have just arrived. We write about the things that actually come up on the ground: paying with WeChat Pay and Alipay, getting a SIM card, taking the high-speed train, ordering food, finding a pharmacy, and the etiquette that keeps you out of trouble.

What is free: 50 travel phrases with audio, 20 China guides, and 146 flashcards. No signup, no email required.

What is paid: a one-time payment of $19.90 for lifetime access to six course tracks (43 video lessons). There is no subscription and nothing renews.

Get the free 50 travel phrases  ·  Browse the China guides

• We go to the primary source first. Government ministries, the railway operator, the payment platforms themselves, UNESCO, and the screens inside the apps — not other travel blogs.
• Every guide carries a "Last updated" date. Rules for foreign visitors in China change often, and a guide without a date is a guess.
• Numbers should be traceable. If a guide states a fee, a limit or a deadline, you should be able to click through to the source inside its Sources section and check it yourself.
• When there is no authoritative source, we say so. Cultural topics — lucky numbers, for example — have no official document behind them, so we do not invent one to look more credible.

17Talk is written and maintained by our teaching team — Mandarin teachers with more than eight years of classroom and online teaching experience, working mostly with learners who arrive in China with zero Chinese. The China guides are written from the same side of the table: what a visitor needs to know before they need it.

• We don't sell subscriptions, and nothing on the site renews automatically.
• We don't publish invented student reviews, testimonials or star ratings.
• We don't use undisclosed affiliate links. If a link earns us anything, we say so on the page.

If something here is out of date or simply wrong, tell us and we will fix it and update the date on the page. That is the point of putting a date on a page in the first place.

The fastest way to reach the 17Talk team is WhatsApp: +852 6313 2437 — we reply within 24 hours, usually faster. You can also read our refund policy or our terms of service.