I am so sorry to hear that.actually,chinese have lots of habits different from foreigners.but they respect foreigner's habits and choice,and they are improving,such as smoking in public areas is inhibited.now more and more chinese people especially young chinese can speak English flunetly.so when you come china again,you will see a different china
during may holidays i with my family visited beijing the experience i met their i think so no one has met . though our visit was fine in the end someone took away our videocam .we just cant make out how it happened as we were too cautious of our belongings as we usually do .we this i just want to alert other tourists this can happen to anyone .we have read so much before going their and also have talked with local people as iam working in china but no one alerted us for such type of things .though we can buy a new one but the memories which were stored in it cant be revived.please all those who are planning to visit take extra extra pain to save your belongings.this place is not a safe place.just forget about the language problem there are other problems to deal with.
My advise... next time you are traveling take a tour...is too much of risk going country co that you dont know the language, culture, etc... I'm going on july and but i book my flight and tour with my travel agency
I actually went to Beijing and Shanghai and had the best experience. Of course I always stay in expensive hotels and ate in good restaurants. I had no problem and when you converted to UD dollars it was 8 times cheaper. I found Beijing very nice and had a lot of problems with the language but the hotel helped us a lot. They gave us some type of cheat sheets with alltheinfo and places togo (in chinesse and with a map). They also advised us not to take unauthorized taxis, etc. I did not need to speak Chinese to cope with Beijing and keep using taxis for everything. Shangai on the other hand was a breeze, everything is in English and there is a train so transportation is easier. I spent 12 days (8 in Beijing and 4 in Shanhai) and have absolutely no complaints.
Agree. I see your point, in my country few people speak English too - we cannot expect it. However, poorly informed as I was, I did. That's why I still think it is a useful piece of advice. Next time I'll definitely get a local guide, or if I'm lucky enough, a friend.
It is not fair to complain that Chinese don't speak enough English. How many of us speak Chinese? If we go to their country, we should expect to speak their language, not expect them to all speak English. I've lived in China and service can be substandard at times, but unless they advertise that they can speak English, saying they can't speak English is not a fair criticism.