KTV / Chinese Karaoke | Discover One of China’s Most Popular Pastimes

What is Chinese KTV? Can foreigners enjoy it, and what should you expect? 🤔

Chinese KTV is karaoke in China. Instead of singing on a bar stage, you book a private room for your group, with big lyric screens, several mics and a song library of over 100,000 songs. You can also order food and drinks to the room.

Foreigners can join in easily. Venues carry English songs as well as Chinese ones, and nobody minds if you can’t carry a tune.

Karaoke, or KTV as it’s called here in China, is a very popular activity.

Although it originated in Japan, karaoke has been part of Chinese city life since the 1990s. In 2021, China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism counted nearly 50,000 karaoke and entertainment venues, each with a basic library of over 100,000 songs.

There are many KTV chains. One of the best known in Shanghai is Haoledi (好乐迪 Hǎolèdí), with branches across the city.

KTV is especially popular in the evenings and on the weekends.

There are even mini KTV booths (迷你KTV mínǐ KTV) in malls and other public places, made for only 2 to 3 people. You scan a QR code on the booth, pay a small fee for a block of time, put on the headphones and sing along to your favourite songs.

Unlike Western-style karaoke, which often involves singing with a mic in front of a big group of people, KTV here involves booking a personal room for you and your friends.

Not only does the room generally have a stand mic where one person can sing in front of the others, it also has a couple of handheld mics, as well as a booth with a table and seats.

The difference here is that you don’t necessarily have to sing in front of everyone, and nobody really cares if you can’t carry a tune!

You can sing along without the mic or share the mic with the friends sitting next to you.

Chinese Karaoke | History of Karaoke

Chinese KTV | How to Book a KTV Room in China

Chinese KTV | What to Expect Inside a KTV Room

Chinese KTV | Picking Songs (Plus Popular Chinese KTV Songs)

Chinese Karaoke | Food and Drinks

Chinese Karaoke | My Personal Experience

Chinese Karaoke | History of Karaoke

Karaoke was invented in 1971, in Kobe, Japan, by a Japanese musician, Daisuke Inoue.

Inoue and his band recorded some of his music for a business man, who wanted to sing along to the music for clients.

When Inoue realized how successful this could be, he created a machine that would play music for people to sing along to.

He and his friends made eleven of these homemade machines, which he then started leasing to bars in Kobe.

The machine was called the 8-Juke. It was a TV-sized machine that would play sound tracks when money was inserted.

From there the 8-Juke was introduced into bars in the Osaka-Kobe area.

Other larger companies eventually took over Inoue’s invention, and because he never patented his machine, Inoue didn’t end up making much money from it.

Karaoke was introduced to China in the 1980s, and it has been extremely popular.

In 2018, the China Audio-Video Copyright Association (CAVCA), the only body licensing songs to KTV venues, ordered businesses to remove over 6,000 songs from their catalogues over copyright claims. In October 2021, new Ministry of Culture and Tourism rules also required karaoke content providers to review their song libraries.

Copyright disputes, the pandemic and new kinds of entertainment have all hit the KTV industry, and the slowdown started well before 2020. In 2025, China Daily reported that Meituan saw a significant drop in both KTV outlets and young customers.

KTV hasn’t disappeared, though. Many venues now fill their daytime slots with middle-aged and retired customers, and an evening in a KTV room is still a classic way to celebrate with friends.

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Chinese KTV | How to Book a KTV Room in China

I’ve been to KTV several times, and our group has always booked the room in advance. Reserving ahead of time ensures that there will be a room for you and your friends.

You can use a helpful app called 大众点评 (Dazhong Dianping) to find a KTV place near you and book a room. The app makes it easy to see what rooms are available and at which times. Depending on how many people are going, you can book a small, medium, or large room.

A small room might fit 3 to 5 people, while a large might go up to 10 or 12.

The app also makes it easy to find opening and closing hours and read reviews (a good way to practice Chinese!)

To find out more about Chinese apps you can’t live without…

Generally, reserving on a weekend evening will be more expensive than during the day or on a weekday.

Prices also depend on how long you want the room for. In my experience, three hours is generally enough time. Any longer would start to get boring.

A room on a weekend evening can cost a few hundred RMB, but split between everyone who goes, it’s fairly affordable. Prices change by city and venue, so check the current rate for your room size on Dianping before you book.

On my last few visits, I paid between 80 and 100 RMB per person, so treat that as a rough guide rather than a fixed price.

Chinese KTV | What to Expect Inside a KTV Room

KTV places are decorated to be fancy, glitzy, and over the top!

The atmosphere is meant to get you excited to sing, usually with lights and decor everywhere.

Inside your personal KTV room, there is a big TV screen (or two) with the lyrics to the songs as well as the music video (for more popular songs).

There’s also a smaller screen on the wall for you to pick your songs, and put them in queue.

From this smaller screen, you can also control the temperature, the lights (look for the multi-coloured, flashing setting), the queue order and skipping songs.

Most song screens are only in Chinese, so these KTV words will help you find your way around:

💡 TIP: Switch to 伴唱 (bànchàng) once you know a song, so it’s your voice the room hears, not the original singer’s.

At one of the KTV places I visited, each personal KTV room had a bathroom right next door! At nicer KTV places, you might have bathrooms with regular toilets, but others only having squatting toilets, which is very commonplace in China.

Chinese KTV | Picking Songs (Plus Popular Chinese KTV Songs)

If you’re worried about the song selection being too small, there’s no need! KTV song libraries are huge, with both Chinese and international songs.

On the song screen, Chinese songs are usually sorted by language: 国语 (guóyǔ) for Mandarin and 粤语 (yuèyǔ) for Cantonese, so you can sing in either. Cantonese classics such as Beyond’s 海阔天空 (Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies) are crowd favourites in Mandarin-speaking cities too.

Knowing a little Chinese is helpful for navigating the song menu, but you should be able to select international songs and find well-known songs in English.

One of my personal favourites is the classic Bohemian Rhapsody!

Singing a slow, clear Chinese song is also a great way to practise your Chinese. Mandarin takes real work, but the good news is that the melody mostly takes over from the tones when you sing, so you can focus on rhythm and pronunciation.

These are some of the Chinese songs you’ll hear most at KTV, from classics that every generation knows to modern group favourites:

💡 TIP: Start with 月亮代表我的心. Your Chinese friends will almost certainly know it, and the lyrics are slow enough to read off the screen.

For lyrics, pinyin and more picks, see our guide to popular Chinese songs to sing.

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Chinese Karaoke | Food and Drinks

KTV places always have food and drinks for you to order! Some places have a mini store inside, where you can get snacks and alcohol.

At other places, you can order from a menu and have the food and drinks brought directly into your room.

These places have staff members who occasionally come in and out to check on you and serve the food and drinks.

However, food can be a little pricier in these places.

KTV food and drinks are not extremely expensive, (especially since, compared to America, food prices in China are very low to begin with!), but you might want to pick a different option.

If the KTV place doesn’t mind, you can bring your own food and drinks.

I can’t say it’s true for every place, but the past couple of times I went, the KTV bar was located in a mall with a food court.

We went downstairs, bought food to-go, and brought our food containers up to the KTV room.

In the past, we’ve even bought drinks from the nearby Family Mart, a common convenience store here in Shanghai, to bring up to the room.

None of the KTV staff members seemed to mind! But take this advice with a grain of salt, as I’m not sure all KTV places are this relaxed.

Chinese Karaoke | My Personal Experience

In my personal experience, I have gone to KTV with friends and enjoyed it thoroughly every time.

One of my tips would be to max out the number of people in the room. If, for example, the room allows 7-10 people, get 10 people to come!

Not only does it decrease the price per person, but having more people singing together can make it less intimidating for someone who’s a little shy about singing.

KTV is also the most fun when you pick songs that everyone (or almost everyone) knows.

Fast, upbeat songs work better for KTV, while slower songs can also slow down the mood. Of course, it depends on each group and the songs they prefer.

Let everyone have a chance to sing into the mic (unless they really don’t want to!), and be aware that it usually takes at least a good half hour for people to really start getting into the music. Don’t play all the best songs at the beginning! Save some for the end!

Make sure to add a long queue of songs. Last time I went, we didn’t add enough songs and ran out with only a few minutes left before our time was up.

I had to scramble to find songs that everyone liked so we could finish out strong. Also, don’t be afraid to just pick songs.

Indecisiveness is the enemy of KTV! Better to just pick a song and skip it if people aren’t into it, than wait for 10 minutes to find the perfect song.

Meanwhile, you’ll be hearing the boring default track that plays between songs.

Have you been to KTV in China?

What did you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

If you need to practise some songs in Chinese, don’t forget to check out our lyrics to Spongebob and Peppa Pig!

To rehearse before your night out, try a karaoke app such as 全民K歌 (Quánmín K gē, Tencent’s app, also known as WeSing) or 唱吧 (Chàngba). Both give you backing tracks with scrolling lyrics on your phone, so you can practise your KTV songs anywhere.

Want to understand every lyric the next time you pick up the mic? 🎤 At LTL you study with native-speaker teachers and can live with a host family, so KTV nights with Chinese friends become part of how you learn. Come and learn Chinese in China.

Chinese KTV | FAQs

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