Dial their number.

Phone cards made for international calls (available at most convenience stores) are a cheap easy way to make international calls if your cell phone provider (or landline provider) doesn’t give a good rate for international calls. Of course, you can check the rates to find out what a call to China would cost you if you do it through your provider.

If you get the phone card, you can ask for one with the best rate to China.

The country code for mainland China is 86. With the phone card, it will give you detailed instructions on dialing. Standard international dialiing from USA is 011 + country code + number.

If you want the cheapest rate, you could try doing it through your computer using a service like Skype.

VoipStunt is a free program that uses the latest technology to bring free and high-quality voice communications to people all over the world. When you use the free VoipStunt software, you can call regular phones in various popular destinations for free or call at an incredible low rate to any other phone on the planet.

You can also call all your online friends (peer-to-peer calls) as long as you like, for free. Just click here to download VoipStunt; the download should take only a few moments depending on your connection speed.
It is convenient and cost less. When I was in America, I used VoipStunt to contact my family, so I guess you foreigners in Chinese can use it to contact your family or freinds too. Hope it is useful.

Use phone card to make the international call to China. Most the Chinese do like this way.

It only costs about 2 cents/minutes.

use skype.

Call up from any calling card the rates to China are the lowest,on average,in the world.
When calling a China Mobile number you are charged at the same rate like you call up a land phone,unlike Europe where one is charged a fortune to call a mobile number.