I'm an English speaker with only a few words of Chinese and I've been there many times. There's enough English about that I would have no worries about doing tourist things on my own--trying to do non-tourist things without translation assistance is another matter and I would be surprised if I could get something like the old age discounts. (70+ gets free admission to most anything government run, there's also a threshold that gets you half off but I don't recall what it is. The buses are also free for 70+ but AFIAK there's no way for someone without a local ID to actually do it.)