> Start in Beijing. Take the train to Tibet.
If this is your first backpacking adventure, I highly recommend not starting in mainland China. It is an order of magnitude more difficult a place to travel than other places.
If this is your first backpacking adventure, I highly recommend not starting in mainland China. It is an order of magnitude more difficult a place to travel than other places.
I agree with the thought though. Rural China is one of the most difficult places to get around I've been to. Outside the cities, most people are just not used to encountering others that can't speak or read, so you have to supply the skills to fumble around and communicate. And Mandarin is a fiendishly difficult language for the native English speaker, so it's tough to pick a few phrases to get around.
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?