I found it very easy and I speak zero Chinese. Plus, it's very cheap, which makes a lot of things (e.g. finding a reasonable hotel for the night) pretty easy. Also safe.
This is frankly impossible. Either you were only in foreign tourist areas, or are a really experienced traveller. I speak a decent amount of Chinese, have lived and travelled extensively in China, and I still find China way more taxing than a country like Cambodia. I don't speak a lick of Khmer, but it is still a traveller's paradise compared to China.
I'm really at a loss to know what you found so difficult.
I did two things that I didn't usually do.
I got people at the hostels I stayed in to write down instructions for me (e.g. tell them to write down "I would like a haircut/I would like to buy a 2nd class sleeper at 22:30 from Xi'an to Chengdu" and stuff like that).
Another thing I did was have the number of somebody who spoke English and Chinese and call them up when I really needed some translation (e.g. with a bus station attendant telling me that their tickets are all sold out for that day).
That's it. Those are the only two things I did in China that I didn't do in Cambodia (or Shanghai/Beijing). Most stuff you buy you can buy just with gestures and a couple of words. Taxis can take you where you want to go with a point to a place on the map. What else is there?
I was in China recently. Met 2 girls who were traveling for the first time. They were planning to spend 6 months in Asia. They made some newbie mistakes in China, but otherwise had no serious problems. China was harder when I went 15 years ago.
They wanted to hop on trains at the last minute, but tickets sell out quickly. They ended up spending a lot more for air travel. They didn't get a guide book; therefore, they wasted a lot of time on logistics and wandering aimlessly around a city. They tried to get into hostels but these are sometimes booked up. They had no backup plan and went looking for a cheap motel. They are vegetarians and didn't know how to ask for "no meat". They ended up eating whatever they could scrounge from grocery stores. I'm a vegetarian and had some terrific meals. They will survive though.
