Travel Scenarios

Arriving at a Chinese airport is smoother than most first-timers expect. Immigration queues move, the signage carries English, and an airport express train usually beats a taxi into town. The friction starts the moment you leave the terminal and have to explain a destination to someone who does not speak English.

From there you are choosing between four ways to move: the metro, a taxi, Didi (the local ride-hailing app), or the high-speed rail network, which is the best in the world and absurdly cheap by European standards. Each has its own vocabulary, and each is worth ten minutes of preparation.

Food is where most travelers end up using the most Mandarin, and where the least English is spoken. Hotel restaurants and chains will hand you a picture menu; the neighborhood noodle shop will not, and that is usually the meal you remember.

Ordering follows a pattern you can learn in one sitting: catch someone's eye, point, say how many portions, then sort out the bill at the end. This section covers that whole arc, plus the ingredient questions that save you from a plate of chili you cannot eat.

A hotel front desk is one of the few places on a trip where expecting English is reasonable. Outside the international chains that expectation thins quickly — in a Chinese business hotel or a guesthouse, check-in is a short conversation in Mandarin and a passport scan.

The phrases worth knowing here are the ones that solve problems: a room that is too hot, a reservation that has vanished, luggage you need to leave after check-out, a late-night request for an extra towel.

Shopping in China divides into two worlds. Malls and chain stores have fixed prices, printed labels and staff who will not budge on either. Markets, tourist streets and small stalls price by negotiation, and the first number is rarely the real one.

Knowing which world you are in changes what you say. In a mall you ask about sizes and payment methods. In a market you ask the price, react to it, and settle somewhere in the middle. Both need numbers, and both need a payment method that works.

Tickets at major attractions increasingly run on your passport: you book a time slot online, scan a code at the gate, and the paper ticket is optional. Museums and headline sights often cap daily numbers, so the practical question is about slots rather than prices.

Outside the paid attractions, what you need is social. Asking a stranger to take your photo, finding a restroom in a park, working out which of the three queues is actually yours.

Nothing here is likely to happen to you, which is exactly why it is worth five minutes. China's three emergency numbers are short and free to dial: 110 for police, 120 for an ambulance, 119 for fire.

You can also lean on hotel staff, who are usually the fastest route to help in a language you can understand. The phrases in this section are deliberately short, because in a stressful moment you will not have room for long sentences.