Tour Guide - Selina Sun

Selina Sun at Jiuzhaigou

Hello, everyone. My name is Selina and I come from Harbin, a beautiful and charming city in the Northeastern part of China, which is famous for the ice and snow sculptures during the winter. I have been an English tour guide for almost five years, including more than three years for TavelChinaGuide. I enjoy my job so much!

I used not to be a tour guide after my graduation from college and I have done a few other jobs. My first job was a shop assistant for two years in Beijing, which forced me to study how to communicate with the customers efficiently and keep them satisfied. How to listen patiently is also an important aspect of this job. When the SARS was on in 2003, there were almost no tourists at all, so the business of our shop was not so good. Thus I had a lot of time for myself. The extra free time gave me a chance to improve my English and to get my associate degree.

Later I got another job as a secretary with a Taiwanese-owned enterprise in Shanghai. This job offered me a good opportunity to learn translation skills. Not long after, the company for some reason dismissed three older employees, so I had to take over all their work, which was a real challenge but good practice for me. I was taught how to arrange the schedule and how to adjust to the challenge and tough problems within this job. I really appreciated it. However, after my three -month trial period, the company did not increase my salary and that made it hard for me to pay for my rent and the daily necessities. What's more, the southern weather and local food bothered me. Finally, I decided to come back to Beijing and took the exam of the English Tour Guide through self-study.

There is no doubt that I was very lucky, because I passed the exam and received my tour guide certificate. I became a real tour guide. Honestly speaking, at first it was hard for me to understand my tourists with their different accents and the way they expressed themselves. But over time, they were eager to help me at any moment and later we became good friends. Some still keep in touch. Sometimes we had funny impressions because of the culture differences and that is really something.

Our working time is not fixed. The holiday time for most people, is probably the busiest time for me. That makes me miss out on so much time to stay with my family and friends. When the peak season comes, I sometimes have to work for several weeks without any rest. Sometimes, it's really tiring but somehow once I hear ''we enjoyed the trip so much'' from my clients, I think everything I did is deserved and worthwhile. As time goes by, I have met people from all over the world, which reminds me to keep going. I'd like to learn more in order to ensure that the tourists could enjoy more from their trip than they initially expected.