The Importance of Literacy

It's almost been a week since arriving in China, and reading Chinese has been a pain in the butt (starting to wish I took weekend Chinese school more seriously during grade school). I'm able to get by with speaking (with some struggling here and there), but everything in China is written in Chinese! Here, take a look - for those who don't know how to read Chinese, what do you think this is?

I understand from my "American" that these are different cellphone plans (key "words": 4G, MB, GB, arabic numerals, etc.), but aside from that and simple characters that I recognize, I have no idea what I'm reading (i.e. descriptions of the different plans; the fine print).

Really, EVERYTHING here is in Chinese - signs in supermarkets, product labels, maps, restaurant menus...heck, even my new cell phone has functions/apps that are only in Chinese (even after setting it in English mode). One may think museums are the exception, but I've already encountered placards and labels that are only in Chinese (and the ones in English only try and are mostly in Chinglish :P)

If I could throw out a couple words describing how I felt this past week, I'd say: lost, confused, embarrassed, incapacitated, afraid, uncertain; helpless. And I imagine that this is what it feels to be illiterate in a world where so much is communicated through text; at a deeper level, I think understanding the importance of literacy.

What am I going to do about it?
I've decided to do some studying on my own...so I purchased the following "textbooks" today:

The bottom two books are filled with traditional Chinese folktales and stories behind Chinese customs; the top two are comic books. The text is written with Chinese characters AND "Pinyin" (romanized pronunciation). I might've looked like an imbecile at the bookstore today, but hey, this is a start :) I'm looking forward to improving my Chinese! (One step at a time - [sigh])