Originally Posted by William S

I can give some update here. I am really enjoying my stay in Beijing. Tried the Beijing-Tianjin railway aswell. Was pretty fun to ride in 330 km/h.
As for the language problems I come pretty far with a ni hao and pointing around. At restaurants I really like that they have pictures, because the English text makes no sense at all. I actually found English knowledge here to be worse than Moscow to be brutally honest, I thought it would be better. Also a Mandarin phrasebook was a good investment especially in restaurants I could just point at beer and then I got beer.