外国 → Wài Guó → Foreign country

I think my “settling in” period is ending quite soon, which is nice and dandy. That being said, the language barrier will still be some challenge for a foreigner trying to live here. The western restaurants, fast food chains, even the online websites have little to no recourse for English speakers. Talking to some people who lived here long enough brought about the assumption that people here simply do not care if you do not speak their language.

I would say some of these services would do themselves a favour by simply having a reliable English option (hello, Weibo?), though I guess from the rate of language adoption of the Mandarin Chinese language, it’s better for me to learn it instead (which I am doing now).