English is taught throughout the Chinese school system, so a great many people have studied it. Far fewer use it, and confidence drops sharply outside international-facing jobs. A hotel receptionist in Shanghai will manage; the person selling you noodles will not, and neither will your taxi driver.
Assume no English in Chengdu, Xi'an, Guilin and everywhere smaller — including at train stations, which is the one that surprises people most.
What actually closes the gap#
This matters far less than it did a decade ago, and the fixes are practical rather than linguistic.
Screenshots of addresses in Chinese characters. The highest-value five minutes of preparation on the whole trip. Save your hotel's name and address in characters before leaving in the morning. It works offline, works on a dying battery, and solves the taxi problem completely.
Photo translation. Pleco's camera OCR reads a menu or a sign in real time and works entirely offline. Google Translate's camera mode does the same if your connection reaches Google. Baidu Translate and Youdao work on any Chinese connection.
Pointing. Point at a photo menu, a display case, or a dish on someone else's table and say 这个 (zhè ge, "this one"). This is not a workaround — it is what Chinese diners do themselves, and it works in every restaurant, market and shop in the country.
DiDi. Ride-hailing removes pronunciation from the equation entirely, because you type the destination rather than saying it. It has a full English interface.
Where signage helps#
Better than the spoken situation suggests. Metro systems in every city a visitor is likely to reach are signed and announced bilingually. High-speed railway stations have English on departure boards and platform signs. Major museums have English labelling. Motorway and street signs carry pinyin.
The gap is conversational, not navigational.
The ten words worth learning#
你好 (nǐ hǎo, hello) · 谢谢 (xiè xie, thank you) · 多少钱 (duō shao qián, how much) · 这个 (zhè ge, this one) · 洗手间 (xǐ shǒu jiān, toilet) · 买单 (mǎi dān, the bill) · 不要辣 (bú yào là, not spicy) · 一个人 (yí ge rén, one person) · 对 (duì, correct) · 我不懂 (wǒ bù dǒng, I don't understand).
Learning these changes how you are treated more than it changes what you can accomplish, which is a reason to bother rather than not.
The full survival set, with pronunciation and the tone problem explained, is in our Mandarin basics guide.