Many jobs in the Greater Vancouver Area are now inaccessible to you if you don’t know Mandarin or Cantonese.
Most Canadian job seekers would understand a “bilingual” position to be demanding language skills in both English and French. But in the Greater Vancouver Area of British Columbia, “bilingual” often refers to English and Mandarin.
If familiarity with Mandarin (and sometimes Cantonese) is not a full-on job requirement, it may be listed as a “preferred qualification”, “strong asset”, or “big bonus.”
The Greater Vancouver area is known to be a thriving hub of Chinese culture.
For instance, popular ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft are currently banned in B.C., but there are a handful of Chinese-language ride-sharing apps such as Udi Kuaiche and Longmao that serve only Chinese customers and will not pick up “Westerners.”
The real estate market in the Greater Vancouver area is infamous for being Chinese-dominated – in Richmond, B.C., where the population is 71 percent Asian (54 percent Chinese), a complaint was filed with the B.C. human rights tribunal in 2015 over a townhouse complex’s strata meetings, which were taking place exclusively in Mandarin.
Telecommunications company Shaw was in the news this summer after a former employee claimed Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking customers were offered lower rates and better deals than customers who did not speak Mandarin or Cantonese.
When it comes to jobs, immigration consulting, banks, casinos, academic writing services, travel-tour agencies, and luxury retail are areas where postings frequently ask for applicants to be fluent in Mandarin.
This doesn’t include businesses that are outright Chinese-owned and Chinese-marketed, such as Fairchild Television, Ming Pao Daily News, and other Chinese-language media outlets, and companies that market to a majority-Chinese customer base, such as T&T Market or one of the region’s many bubble tea chains.
Some job postings were written entirely in Chinese characters. But more and more non-Chinese retail brands are asking for Mandarin-speaking sales personnel in Metro Vancouver– brands such as Lululemon, Freedom Mobile, and Sleep Country Canada.
What made a little less sense was my quick online job search that showed organizations such as Vancouver Fashion Week, Canada Youth Arts Development Program, and Canada Youth Robotics Club all listing fluency in Mandarin as a job requirement.
A moseying through a few online forums shows that a couple of Vancouver-area individuals have openly complained about job postings requiring Mandarin-language skills, but many of the responses to these individuals dismiss their concerns, and tell them “learn Mandarin then.”
Should those who were born in Canada and have their roots in the Vancouver area simply have to accept that their region is being colonized by a wealthy foreign class, and spend time and money to learn the language of their colonizers?
