A Chinese "new" is usually nothing of the sort. It is most likely a refurbished unit sold as new.

I have an N9 but I cannot claim to be an expert and I have never flashed it. But from what I have read on this forum, images come with version numbers and it is not possible to downgrade. Unfortunately, within the same release, different language variants are part of the version number and Chinese is the highest. In other words, you may be stuck with the Chinese soft.