Please send me the quotation.

“Please send me the quotation” is one of the most common things anyone sourcing from China will ever write, and the most common mistake is translating “please” as 请 and calling it done. 请 (qǐng) does mean “please,” but in Chinese business communication, a bare 请 + verb construction can read as terse — the equivalent of “Send quote” rather than “Could you send a quote?” The fix is 麻烦 (má fan), which literally means “to trouble” or “to inconvenience” and functions as the most natural softener in Chinese requests. 麻烦你发一下 (má fan nǐ fā yī xià) = “Could I trouble you to send it” — polite because it acknowledges the other person’s effort.

The format matters too. 报价 (bào jià) is the price quote itself — a number. 报价单 (bào jià dān) is the quotation document — a proper sheet with itemized prices, terms, validity period, and company stamp. If you ask for 报价, you might get a WeChat message that says “单价 3.5 元.” If you ask for 报价单, you’re signaling you want something more formal, ideally with a company letterhead or stamp. For initial sourcing, ask for the 报价单 — it sets a more professional tone and gives you a document you can file and compare.

In established relationships, you can drop the formality entirely: 能发一下报价吗? (Can you send the quote?) or even just 最新价格发我一下 (Send me the latest price). The shorter your message, the closer the relationship. A new supplier gets 麻烦; a supplier you’ve worked with for three years gets 发我一下. Getting this gradient right is one of the small signals that distinguishes someone who actually works with Chinese suppliers from someone who learned business Chinese from a textbook.