In many places, including trains, stations, the metro, airport—basically anywhere where there are likely to be lots of people including lots of foreigners—signs are written in both Chinese and English. Announcements are usually in Mandarin and English.
Well, I say English, but it’s Chinese English — beautiful pronounciation, weird grammar. Plus ça change!
What it meant, though, was that, despite my inability to read more than a couple of Chinese characters, I could navigate around and between the big cities.
A few Chinese people speak English, although generally not very well. Their English is rather like most Brit’s French: they’ve learnt it at school, but not really had any reason to use it, so it’s too much hovercraft and not enough eels. People fall back on translators, just as in my youth people fell back onto dictionaries, although I must say automatic translators are far better.