Abstract Grit, viz. a combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals, is a psychological variable that has recently attracted scholarly attention. Research along this psychological line is significant because it complements the rich on-going research on cognitive variables. The seminal research by Plonsky (2018) and colleagues has validated an instrument to measure what they call ‘L2 grit’ in the Iranian EFL context. As a partial replication of the above research in the Chinese context, the present study confirmed the two-fold structure of L2 grit identified in the seminal research, and found that the selected socio-biographical variables (e.g. multilingualism, L2 joy, age, and gender) were linked to L2 grit to varying degrees. Additionally, this study proposes providing a range of effect sizes for each predictor in hierarchical regression as a more refined data analysis approach. Suggestions (e.g. considering a wider multilingual population) are made for future research.