I have a hard time imagining how you can get into business with people in Huaqiangbei without speaking Mandarin even with that guide in hand but without an interpreter. But maybe it can work out with pointing and writing down arabic numbers?
Real time voice translation is getting really good. Standard text translation is pretty much perfect for technical details, but just may miss idioms. You just have your smartphones out, type your message, and show the translation to the other person. They read it and start typing on their phone, then show it to you. I got through China pretty painlessly this way, and it is so normal for many, especially the young. I went to one restaurant where they got the younger waiter when they saw me walk in, who I thought would speak English. She just knew the phone text translation ritual, but was an expert in that.
But for millennia, people have gone to far away lands where they don't speak the language, and somehow managed to build trade routes without even having a dictionary or calculator. It is not that hard to work out a pidgin. Tons of things you can do with pointing and gesturing. Marco Polo would have killed to even have Google Translate circa 2010.
I'll also assert with no evidence that it is generally harder for an English speaking engineer to successfully communicate a technical idea into business speak for English speaking VC investors than it is for an English speaking engineer to communicate a request to buy a specific part to a Mandarin speaking engineer.
My baby son doesn't talk yet, aside of 5 words, but he still manages to transmit me what he wants by using his hands, muttering and mumbling on different tones. If I still don't get it, he grabs me by the hand and go show me what he wants by pointing his finger.
I somewhat did the same when traveling to foreign countries and meeting people that don't speak any of the languages I speak.
> I'll also assert with no evidence that it is generally harder for an English speaking engineer to successfully communicate a technical idea into business speak for English speaking VC investors than it is for an English speaking engineer to communicate a request to buy a specific part to a Mandarin speaking engineer
I've never done this in China, but I've done it in Vietnam (before I learned more of the language) and in Japan.
It is surprising how much you can communicate by drawing circuit diagrams, sketches of oscilloscope traces, and equations! It works quite well!
However one problem I encountered was that many (maybe most) vendors were not engineers and had no understanding of the parts sold. They just knew the name of the parts they had in stock, and how much they could sell them for, and that's it. Often they weren't even being paid -- it's a family business and they were just the niece or nephew that got roped in to vaguely watching the store while playing games on their phone.
This was much more of an issue in Vietnam (Nhat Tao market) than in Tokyo (Tokyo Radio tower). In the latter there appeared to be quite a few retired engineers who were quite enthusiastic to meet someone who was looking for something specific. It was pretty neat, and I occasionally encountered someone with a wealth of knowledge!
Buy and read the book - you can point at stuff in it, it's designed with that in mind - take a hand calculator so you can type numbers/prices - point at things, smile a lot
Do learn a little Mandarin, start with Nihao = hello, Xièxiè (shay shay) == thank you - na = that, zhe = this - bu = no, dui = correct - also yuan/kuai the currency (kuai is used interchangeably, a bit like "bucks").
It's all pretty easy, everyone wants to do a deal, they want you to come back as a repeat customer
It's not quite as bad as that. I speak no Mandarin but managed to purchase parts in the markets just by gesticulating and having part numbers (where appropriate).
A surprising number of the vendors had at least a little english - enough for commerce anyway.
They usually have a calculator to show you prices. Translation apps that aren't Google work to some extent. Some speak enough English to haggle, so numbers mostly, and it's not hard to learn Chinese numbers.
It’s MOSTLY Mandarin you will hear spoken in Shenzhen, while it is true that Guangdong province is generally Cantonese speaking - Shenzhen is a city mostly made up of migrants from all over China so Mandarin is the lingua franca.
Somewhat related, as a result of this, Shenzhen is a great place to try out many different regional Chinese foods.
Most people are in Shenzhen are from other parts of China, you'll hear Mandarin (the default) Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien etc - most people probably speak some dialect of Mandarin as well as their birth language
