One of the biggest misconceptions I had when I came to China was that English would be spoken all over China. This was based on my previous visit to Hong Kong and the general global standard of English in business.
Perhaps it was just my itinerary and contacts over the length of my trip; however, I found hardly any Chinese people that understood English. I make a distinction between "speaking English" and "understanding English". I had 3 tour conductors of which 2 could recite english information, but only 1 that actually understood our questions and answered them effectively.
The Chinese language is difficult to learn. They have 4000 characters in their alphabet verses 26 for us. The phonetics of the two language are also much different. I am convinced that you have to learn Chinese almost at birth if you intend to speak it like a local. I found that when I attempted to speak Chinese, some Chinese people would understand and some don't.
As a result of my affliction, I spent most of time communicating by pointing to phrases and negotiating prices by tapping numbers back and forth on a calculator.
Someday I hope somebody finally invents a box that you can speak into in English and have it translate to Chinese and visa versa.
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