There is a translation for vegetarianism but every Chinese person I asked didn't seem to have heard of a vegetarian before. This made it difficult as they would order for example a dish of duck cooked with vegetables and offer me the vegetables that had been cooked in the meat juices. This happened quite often, luckily I like rice and didn't get sick of eating it.
There were some interesting meat dishes in the region I visited. Apparently the dishes vary greatly depending on which part of China you are visiting. In Shandong I never saw dog on menus, but I did see a lot of chicken feet, bullfrogs, intestines, duck blood soup and once a turtle being served.
The nicest dishes I tried were lotus roots, candied potatoes (which were so hot they had to be dipped into water before eating) and honey roasted aubergines.
Meals were always fairly cheap, I never paid more than the equivalent of £8 when eating out. I sometimes ate lunch at the Shandong University canteen. Food there was very good value for money; it was always very filling and most of my meals there came to the equivalent of 35p (meat dishes would've been slightly more).
There was a lot more western food available than I thought. In all the major cities I saw there was a starbucks, several KFCs, many pizza huts (which sold odd pizzas such as octopus on a pizza) and a Mcdonalds. Mcdonald's restaurants seemed to be more of a coffee shop than a fast food chain as it is at home - the one I went in sold a range of patisserie cakes and macaroons as you would see in a French coffee shop. The fast food served seemed fairly similar if not the same as back at home, apparently KFC had a 'sale' range for food that is going out of date.
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