My experience is limited to just Xi'an, which I spent a few months in. Almost nobody spoke more than a few words of English as soon as you moved outside the vicinity of the Terracotta Army, the city wall, etc.

This was years ago before Covid, but the vibe was still that random Chinese people were asking to take pictures with me because it was a novelty to see a white person visiting temples and stuff further outside the city.

A lot of the time, we didn't have guides or friends with us, so we got along by communicating with translation apps and asking strangers for help. At one point, we had a whole bus (like 12 people.were actually talking, it was wild) debating on which stop we should get off before someone said "Here!" and the driver ushered us off. Then a woman on the street pointed us in the direction of the place we wanted to go.

So, I would recommend it, but with the caveat that you have to be willing to put yourself out there a bit and talk to people, even if youre socially awkward like me. The language barrier helps dampen it somewhat, and we were usually laughing at each others inability to understand.

[–] Midnight_Pearl@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago

i was with someone who could speak chinese for most of my stay, so it was fairly easy for me despite my limited chinese.

but, you should probably be able to get by using wechat's translation features since it can translate both image and audio. i used it a few times myself.