alt Hacker News> Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese
Obligatory 'Chinese ain't a language, you probably mean Mandarin' comment aside, part of the issue may be that Chinese languages are (mostly?) tonal, which for many Westerners is quite a blocker. N=1, but when I see a down-and-then-up tone, my brain just goes 'nope'.
Japanese is also accented by tones, but it's pretty robust even if you get them wrong thanks to context.
The common example of hashi (bridge) and hashi (chopsticks) demonstrates that. If a foreigner asks for a bridge to eat their ramen with, they probably meant chopsticks.