To put it short, I've always been wanting to go to China on holiday. After much consideration, I've decided that a good place to go to would be Guangzhou. It seems to be a nice blend of a big modern city and traditional Chinese architecture with lots of beautiful sights and interesting things to see. It also holds the CAN airport so getting there from Europe should be very easy. Now, I'm not sure if Guangzhou is a common choice for tourists from around the world, but if it isn't then the first problem one will probably encounter is the language. How the hell does one navigate through a place that big without being able to communicate with people or read signs? City transport / hired car + GPS? Neither will work surely, you need to be able to read where you're going to in the first place. Communication is my only and biggest worry and it's something I need to sort out before I even seriously start thinking about going there. Have any of you non-Chinese speaking guys been to Guangzhou or another big city in China? How did you find things? Was it an "easy" place to go on holiday or did you find it rather challenging? Any basic advice would be useful , I really don't know what to expect. I'd almost certainly be going "privately", not with a group. Also, roughly what are we looking at in terms of food/transport and museum prices once we're there? Hotels seem to be pretty well priced.