I’ve been abroad for quite a while, but despite living in a non-English speaking country and learning something of the language, I still prefer to use English on my PCs… it’s just faster to learn and use.
So whenever I need something from Google in English, I always set the cookie to the default using the link: http://www.google.com/ncr and then everything usually comes up in English instead of Chinese.
If you travel, and your PC gets geotargetted as non-US (very annoying sometimes … when, for example, you want to read the Google News)… this trick will save you a lot of frustration.
Kenneth