Sharing culture

Jin Zhengwen, 31, has worked as a tour guide for nearly six years. He holds a Mandarin-language tour guide license, but can speak fluent Korean. Jin said what he cares about most is the satisfaction he gets from his work, and explaining China's cultural heritage to visitors.

"I worked in South Korea from 2016 and returned to Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture in Northeast China's Jilin province around 2018," he said. "I'm from a Korean ethnic group, but spoke very poor Korean before I went to South Korea and honed my language skills there."

Jin said a good tour guide needs to connect with his or her clients. "From my experience, it's of great importance to resonate with foreign travelers and get to learn their real needs," he said.

The travel agency he works for has about four tour guides who speak Korean. However, in peak season it is in dire need of temporary staff who can speak Korean, he said.

"A foreign-language speaking guide might have been a good money-making job 10 or 20 years ago, but things have changed in recent years. The job is not that stable, and many of my peers work outside the prefecture or in big cities for higher pay," he added.

Song Xueyan is a 43-year-old Russian-language tour guide who started his career in 2008 in Hunchun, Jilin, which shares a border with Russia.

"Russian was my college major. I thought my language skills would return to zero if didn't use them for a long time, so I decided to be a Russian-language tour guide," he said.

"It's not an easy job because I need to be on call 24 hours in case the travelers have some emergencies."

Seasonal fluctuations mean the pay is not steady, Song said.

"In peak season, I earn about 400 yuan a day guiding a tour group, while the payment falls to 200 or 300 a day in the slack season," he said. "I usually head to Sanya, the coastal city in southern province of Hainan during, the slack season."

Around 2020, amid the COVID-19 epidemic, he started operating his own social media account to teach Russian free of charge. During that period he also began foreign trading and gained a teaching certification.

"I'm always grateful that my language skills gained me a place in society. Foreigners are no different from us, and communication can help us understand each other," he said.

Looking for recruits

With the boom in the inbound tourism market, travel companies are seeking to hire more foreign-language graduates and talented young people.

The number of jobs in the tourism and leisure industries has increased continuously from the second quarter of 2023 after the nation loosened travel policies earlier that year, the latest figures from recruitment platform Zhaopin show.

Jobs in the sector surged 96.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, 53.6 percent in the third quarter, and 83.4 percent in the final quarter.

The market's recruitment needs for tourism talent increased 32.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, according to Zhaopin.

"We have been recruiting tour guides who speak fluent Russian for quite a long time. We now have about 15 full-time Russian-language guides and hire temporary workers over the summer, usually college students for part-time jobs," said Li Yao, general manager of Heihe Youth Travel Services Co in northeastern Heilongjiang province.

The company mainly operates cross-border tourism services between China and Russia.

He said it's not easy to pass the exam and get a national permit to operate as a tour guide. The pay of tour guides is also dependent on the economic situation of the province a tour guide works in, Li added.