Comment by aebtebeten

11 days ago

thanks! I hadn't been thinking retail though; I'd been thinking of people who were studying a language in order to signal that they were both interested in and committed to cultivating 关系 before exploring wholesale possibilities.

Wouldn't cantonese help with that? After all, languages are accomplishments, not acquisitions: you can't just buy spoken facility, you have to earn it through study and practice.

Or am I mistaken there too?

EDIT: another practical advantage: polyglots can code switch to quickly communicate things monoglots might have to resort to lengthy circumlocution to communicate.

EDIT2: Walkable city! Sweet! I don't know about Houston, but it looks way nicer than what I remember of LA or NYC. Street trees, even.

EDIT3: do I have these prices right? 8,8 CNY ~= 1 CHF? Meanwhile, YouTube is serving me local ads for kitchen knives at 330 CNY!

EDIT4: "Muslim Restaurant" == halal?

EDIT5: final thought: the narrator, like my friend, could almost be from Louisiana, where the three main topics of conversation are: (1) the food you ate last, (2) the food you're going to eat next, and (3) the food you're eating right now.

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aebtebeten

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gsf_emergency_6  10 days ago

In theory, and certainly that's how some rationalize it. In practice, compradores are the most sought after.. in the old days, some of those guys were fluent in English, but maybe the Judeo-Christian vibes* were just as relevant. As in retail VC, where lack of schlep-tolerance is a red-flag (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BA%A2%E6%97%97L5#/media/Fi...), so lack of interest in the details of the better life you're pursuing => ..?

Yes 清真 is the sinicization

3. Front men are also in demand.. different vibes expected of these (outer party?)

*https://youtu.be/nryXhiKdwi0