How to ask for an appointment in Chinese – Chinese Edge

In this post I will provide you with vocabulary and phrases you need to ask for an appointment in Chinese.

When reading this guide be sure to refer to my other posts which are directly relevant:

Let’s start with a simple request for an appointment, we will build on this as we progress through this post with requesting times and dates.

Table of Contents

我wǒ想xiǎng预yù约yuē (wǒ xiǎng yùyuē) is the most simple way to say “I want to make an appointment’. Here is a word-for-word break down:

As you can see this is a very straight forward phrase. So what can you say after 我wǒ想xiǎng预yù约yuē / (wǒ xiǎng yùyuē)? Here are some examples:

Essentially you can insert many things after 我wǒ想xiǎng预yù约yuē / (wǒ xiǎng yùyuē) to say who you want to make a reservation with.

You can substituted 要yào (yào) or (xiǎng yào) instead of 想xiǎng (xiǎng), the meaning is essentially the same, although 想xiǎng (xiǎng) carries the meaning of “would like” while 要yào (yào) means “want”:

I’ll use 要yào (yào), 想xiǎng要yào (xiǎng yào) and 想xiǎng (xiǎng) interchangeably in this post, don’t be too concerned with the slight variation in meaning.

我wǒ想xiǎng预yù约yuē去qù看kàn (wǒ xiǎng yùyuē qù kàn) is a slight modification of 我wǒ想xiǎng预yù约yuē (wǒ xiǎng yùyuē) in that we have added “go see” 去qù看kàn (qù kàn) to make it a little more complete.

When making an appointment, it is appropriate to start with something like “hello”, “good morning” or “may I ask”. Here are some examples

Take a look at my post on how to say hello in Chinese for more examples of starting a conversation.

To make an appointment today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, you need to know how to say these words in Chinese:

To use the above when setting an appointment, you can simply add these to the end of the phase 我想要预约 (wǒ xiǎng yào yùyuē)

To make an appointment on a given day of the week, you can reuse the phrase 我wǒ想xiǎng要yào预yù约yuē (wǒ xiǎng yào yùyuē) and simply add the day of the week. First here are the days of the week in Chinese:

You should note that Monday to Saturday are simply written as “Day 1” through to “Day 6” using the characters for one through to six. i.e.

Now here are some example sentences using 我想要预约 (wǒ xiǎng yào yùyuē) + this + :

As you can see 这zhè个ge星xīng期qī (zhè ge xīngqí ) has been added, here 这zhè个ge (zhè ge) means “this” and, as I’ve given above, each day of the week starts with 星期 (xīngqí)

If today is say a Monday, you might want to book an appointment for Wednesday next week, that is not this Wednesday. To do this you simply replace 这zhè个ge (zhè ge) with 下xià个gè (xià gè), which means “next”. Here is a complete list of how to to book appointments for “next” week:

To make an appointment for the morning, you will want to ask something like ” want an appointment for tomorrow morning” or perhaps “I’d like an appointment for Wednesday afternoon”, to do this you simply add the Chinese words for morning, afternoon of evening:

To use these phrases when setting an appointment, you can simply add them after the previous phrases, here are some examples:

If you want to make an appointment at a specific time in Chinese, you simply need to add the day and time at the end of the phrase we have used throughout this post i.e. 我wǒ想xiǎng要yào预yù约yuē (wǒ xiǎng yào yùyuē) + day+ time. Before we dive into some examples, here are times of day in Chinese:

When asking for a time, we simply say the day, followed by the time, here are some examples:

You may need to specify if the time you are giving is AM or PM, as while it may not always be obvious. Here we simply use the Chinese equivalent of AM and PM:

In Chinese “AM” 上午 (shàngwǔ) or “PM” 下午 (xiàwǔ) are placed before the time. Here are some examples

Finally, let’s update our phrases by adding “AM” 上shàng午wǔ (shàngwǔ) or “PM” 下xià午wǔ (xiàwǔ):

A few final notes on times:

If you want to make an appointment on a given date in Chinese, you can simply append this to our standing phrase i.e. 我wǒ想xiǎng要yào预yù约yuē (wǒ xiǎng yào yùyuē) + date

Dates in Chinese are written the month and day of month number, that is month number + 月 ( yuè) + day + 日 (rì), where ：

Here are some example dates, if you want more please check out my post on How to say dates in Chinese:

Finally, as I’ve already said, you simply add the date after the request for an appointment 我wǒ想xiǎng要yào预yù约yuē (wǒ xiǎng yào yùyuē) + date:

Here are some examples of how to ask the other person to suggest an appropriate appointment time. Note the use of the word for “time” in Chinese, 时shí间jiān (shíjiān):

If you’d rather ask for an appropriate date, you can substitute the word “date” 日期 (rìqí) instead:

Here is a summary of the vocabulary:

Finally, if you want to cancel or reschedule an appointment in Chinese, these are some useful phrases.

Be sure to check out my post on where I cover a sample dialogue for making an appointment in Chinese.