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Multilingual.
| 
April 25, 2022, 12:12 PM
27 May 2022 – 29 May 2022
Online
Follow us on Telegram for the latest updates: https://t.me/mothershipsg
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Xie Dong has worked in a flower garland shop in Little India for the past 14 years.
The migrant worker moved from China to Singapore without knowing a lick of Tamil or English.
Lianhe Zaobao featured Xie in a video about him and his work.
Couldn’t even count in English
The 38-year-old Xie is from Anhui, a province in eastern China.
“When I first got here, I knew nothing. I didn’t even know how to count in English,” said Xie.
Xie said at the beginning, learning Tamil without a common language was tough.
Due to the language barrier, he had to rely on signing with his hands to communicate.
Xie’s boss patiently taught him to speak Tamil little by a little and he also watched Indian films with Chinese subtitles on a daily basis to learn.
As 80 per cent of his customers are Indians, interacting with them at work helped him to learn more quickly as well.
Now, not only is he fluent in Tamil, he has also picked up basic English, Malay and Thai.
Learnt to make flower garlands
Given his line of work, Xie has also learnt a great deal about the Indian culture.
“Flower making also, initially he don’t know, now he do everything, do nicely and well,” said Xie’s boss.
Xie explained to Zaobao reporters the different kinds of flower garlands and their uses.
While garlands meant for Ganesha, the elephant god, are made of grass, other flowers like jasmine can be used for many Hindu gods.
“They use red flowers to pay respects to the dead, but for us Chinese we like to use white flowers, which is coincidentally completely opposite from us,” said Xie.
Customers only buy from him
In the past, Xie found that customers were not accepting of merchants who were of other races.
But over time, he has developed his own pool of regular customers who know him by name.
“If I am not around, a lot of customers would wait for me at the shop. They wouldn’t buy from any other sellers,” said Xie.
He said that Indians tend to stick to buying from selected merchants that they were familiar with, even if they could get a better deal with another seller.
Watch the full video by ZaoBao here.
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Top images via Lianhe Zaobao.
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