One of my biggest gripes about my US-China (and vv) flights on UA is the fact that most UA FAs are unable to communicate with the majority of their customers. This has been the case for the bulk of my relationship with UA. But, things were different today; every single FA in the Y cabin was able to effectively interact with my (senior Chinese) seatmates in Mandarin.

I don't know whether staffing China flights with such folks is a new pratice (would have to be very new because I fly frequently) or if I just got lucky, but if the former, I'm very pleased with UA (in spite of the fact that the service itself was nothing stellar).