Do You Speak Mandarin or Cantonese?

There come the tourist buses. The majority of the tourists are Chinese people from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Chongqing, Hangzhou and many other cities in China.

So the retail stores in McArthur Glen Designer Outlet near YVR airport and those in the Pacific Center in Downtown, Vancouver keep on recruiting sales associates who speak Mandarin (Putonghua) and / or Cantonese besides English. 

Young people who speak English and Chinese  are popupar with the store managers in retail industry. Some stores even go further to offer higher wages or commissions to the sales associates who speak Chinese. It is true that business is market-oriented and profit-driven.

This is a good opportunity for the Chinese international students to obtain Canadian working experience. It is also a location where the Chinese students communicate with their countrymen in their own language. In your routine work in the stores, you serve the Chinese customers who speak various dialects --- dialects of Shanghai, Guangdong, Northeast, Shandong, Henan, Sichuan, Hubei, Fujian, just to name a few. 

I am a kind of funny person. To test my linguistic capacity,  last week I pretended to be from Haidian District of Beijing when I met with a customer from Chaoyang District of Beijing.  I spoke Beijing slangs as the Beijing natives did. Once I told my customers from Chongqing that I came from Jiangbei District of Chongqing. We had a wonderful time sharing the updated information about the city.

Of course, I have to speak fluent English since the customers come from various continents throughout the world. They are normally in a rush. So I have to catch their attention within ten seconds and hook them up until they purchase two or four pairs of shoes.

It is a big challenge, isn't it?  It is also fun working in a retail store.