The state-owned Harbin No. X even s

The state-owned Harbin No. X even served as an important foil against which
elite retailers in the city defined themselves as modern (Hanser, 2005).
Within the confines of Harbin No. X itself, however, sales clerks frequently
sought to portray the state-owned store as insulated from unfair market
forces.
At other times, the distinction was not so much between state and private
retailers as between large, reputable stores and unreliable
geti
merchants
operating in clothing bazaars. For example, when a pair of women
customers balked at the prospect of buying a display coat, Big Sister Zhao
replied, ‘I just put that coat there this morning. This isn’t The Underground
[a
geti
clothing bazaar], we wouldn’t sell dirty items, it’s not like with
geti
,
this is a big store (
da shangdian
)’. The customers persisted to be anxious
and picky, prompting Zhao to continue in this vein. ‘This isn’t The Under-
ground, we sell real brands (
zhenggui paizi
) here’. She added that our
merchandise was absolutely of good quality. ‘You don’t have to worry about
the [down in the] coat smelling bad after wearing it a couple of weeks’,
Zhao assured them. This point seemed to hit a cord. ‘Yes, that’s true about
the smell, I’ve had that happen to me’, one of the women mused. Given the
social proximity of Harbin No. X and inexpensive
geti
markets, these
clothing bazaars were the primary target of sales clerks’ distinction
practices.
These sales pitches, then, sought to explicitly differentiate Harbin No. X
and its workers from both low-status private merchants and up-scale luxury
stores. Whether sales clerks drew attention to the store’s state-sector status
or to its large size (which once had correlated quite perfectly with state
ownership), they attempted to stake out a new, middling position by
bringing a diminishing symbolic capital to bear in a new market context.
In this way, workers deployed a set of increasingly history-bound resources
as counter-strategies of both trust and distinction.
‘Reqing’ and working-class nostalgia on the sales floor
In seeking to distinguish Harbin No. X from other retail settings, sales
clerks also created a space that
felt
distinct to shoppers. Sales clerks modeled
their interactions with customers on a notion of straightforwardness and
warmth –
reqing
– that both clerks and customers identified as character-
istic of traditional working-class culture and, even, expressive of a kind of
genuine feeling that had been greatly dampened by economic reforms,
market relations, and the downward mobility of China’s urban industrial
proletariat. This
reqing
expressed a sense of mutuality between workers and
customers that was marked by straightforwardness and a blunt candor.
In China’s various service settings, the term
reqing
has been broadly
adopted by promoters of new, modern standards of service (e.g. Zhu and
Hanser
■
Sales floor trajectories
477
461-492 073147 Hanser (D) 7/11/06 08:52 Page 477
© 2006 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
by HARWAN ANDI KUNNA on November 3, 2007
http://eth.sagepub.com
Downloaded from
Wang, 2000), and sales clerk training classes for new, modern department
stores exhort sales clerks to engage in ‘warm service’ (
reqing fuwu
).
Managers at Harbin No. X also paid lip service to these new notions of
service. On the sales floors at Harbin No. X, however, the notion of
reqing
took on a distinct significance, caught up as it was in a politics of
nostalgia and what might be characterized as a working class ‘strategy of
representation’ (Rofel, 1999: 135). At a time when many in Harbin faced
layoffs and unemployment, sales clerk performances of
reqing
service
created a social space that evoked the positive qualities associated with the
urban working class, simultaneously asserting Harbin No. X’s difference as
well as the value of working-class social relations. The result was a pattern
and tenor of interaction that I found in no other retail setting in Harbin.
Literally, the Chinese term ‘
reqing
’ means ‘warm feeling’ and refers to
genuine expressions of warmth and enthusiasm. In everyday life, the word
is used to describe people of honest friendliness and warm hospitality, and
the people of China’s northeast understand themselves to be especially
endowed with these qualities of welcoming and generosity. For the working
class, expressions of
reqing
are also linked to perceptions of themselves as
honest and straightforward (
laoshi
and
zhishuai
) people. But whereas traits
like
laoshi
(‘honest’, ‘frank’) and
zhishuai
(‘straightforward’, ‘candid’) can
carry such negative connotations, especially in the reform era, of ‘ingenious-
ness and naïveté’ (Yang, 1994: 66; for striking parallels in postsocialist
Poland, see Dunn, 1999),
reqing
commands a uniformly positive meaning.
Such character traits and cultural expectations are closely associated with
the earthy working-class culture of China’s northeastern cities, reflected in
the cultural ideals William Jankowiak (1993) identified in working-class
neighborhoods in the northern city of Huhhot (see also Whyte and Parish,
1984, on personal relations and the ‘comradely ethic’ found in urban
China). Similarly, traditional urban work units, often associated with the
despotic social relations of loyalism and clientelism (Walder, 1986), were
historically also stable communities of highly personalized relations. Work
units involved an ‘expectation of continuity’ that resulted in strong, long-
term relationships and a sense of collective interests (Womack, 1991: 328;
see also Hertz, 2001; Li, 1993).
These positive, idealized features associated with working-class settings
– the strength of human feeling and the honesty and straightforwardness
of social relationships – parallel the reform-era nostalgic themes described
by both Lisa Rofel (1999) and Guobin Yang (2003). In the 1980s, Rofel
found that older women factory workers harkened back to a pre-Cultural
Revolution China when ‘an innocent state [was] at one with its citizens’
(1999: 131), especially its workers.

Hasil (Bahasa Indonesia) 1:

BUMN Harbin No. X bahkan berfungsi sebagai foil penting terhadap yangelit pengecer di kota didefinisikan diri sebagai modern (Hanser, 2005).Dalam batas-batas Harbin No. X itu sendiri, namun, penjualan Panitera seringberusaha untuk menggambarkan toko milik negara seperti terisolasi dari pasar tidak adilkekuatan.Di lain waktu, perbedaan itu tidak begitu banyak antara negara dan Pribadipengecer antara toko-toko besar, terkemuka dan dapat diandalkan geti pedagangberoperasi di pakaian Bazaar. Sebagai contoh, ketika sepasang wanitaPelanggan menolak pada prospek membeli mantel tampilan, Zhao kakakmenjawab, ' Aku hanya meletakkan bahwa mantel sana pagi ini. Ini bukan The Underground[a geti pakaian bazaar], kami tidak akan menjual item yang kotor, hal ini tidak seperti dengan geti,ini adalah (toko besarDa shangdian)’. Pelanggan tetap bertahan untuk cemasdan pilih-pilih, mendorong Zhao terus dalam vena ini. ' Ini bukan Under -Tanah, kami menjual merek nyata)zhenggui daririnie) di sini '. Dia menambahkan bahwa kamibarang dagangan adalah benar-benar berkualitas baik. ' Anda tidak perlu khawatir tentang[ke dalam] mantel berbau buruk setelah memakai itu beberapa minggu,Zhao meyakinkan mereka. Hal ini tampaknya memukul tali. ' Ya, itu benar tentangbau, aku sudah yang terjadi kepada saya ', salah satu wanita pikir. Diberikansosial kedekatan Harbin No. x dan murah getipasar, inipakaian Bazaar adalah target utama penjualan Panitera perbedaanpraktek-praktek.Pitches penjualan ini, kemudian, berusaha secara eksplisit membedakan Harbin No. Xdan para pekerja dari pedagang swasta berkedudukan rendah dan mewah up-skalatoko. Apakah penjualan Panitera menarik perhatian ke toko negara-sektor statusatau ke ukuran besar (yang sekali telah berkorelasi cukup sempurna dengan negarakepemilikan), mereka berusaha untuk mengintai posisi baru, menengah denganmembawa semakin berkurang modal simbolis untuk menanggung dalam konteks pasar yang baru.Dengan cara ini, pekerja dikerahkan set semakin sejarah-terikat sumber dayasebagai strategi kontra kepercayaan dan perbedaan.'Reqing' dan kelas pekerja nostalgia di lantai penjualanDalam mencari untuk membedakan Harbin No. X dari pengaturan ritel lain, penjualanPanitera juga menciptakan ruang yang merasaberbeda untuk pembeli. Penjualan Panitera modelinteraksi mereka dengan pelanggan pada gagasan keterusterangan dankehangatan- reqing -bahwa pegawai dan pelanggan diidentifikasi sebagai karakter-istic kebudayaan tradisional kelas buruh dan, bahkan, ekspresif dari jenis dariperasaan asli yang telah sangat dibasahi oleh reformasi ekonomi,hubungan-hubungan pasar, dan mobilitas ke bawah Cina perkotaan industriproletar. Ini reqingdinyatakan rasa kebersamaan antara pekerja danPelanggan yang ditandai oleh keterusterangan dan keterusterangan tumpul.Di Cina berbagai pengaturan layanan, istilah reqing telah luasdiadopsi oleh promotor standar yang baru, modern Layanan (misalnya Zhu danHanser■Lintasan lantai penjualan477461-492 073147 hanser (D) 7/11/06 08:52 halaman 477© 2006 SAGE publikasi. Semua Hak, milik. Tidak untuk penggunaan komersial atau distribusi yang tidak sah.oleh ANDI HARWAN KUNNA pada 3 November 2007 http://ETH.sagepub.comDownload dari Wang, 2000), dan penjualan petugas kelas pelatihan Departemen yang baru, modernToko menasihati penjualan Panitera untuk terlibat dalam 'hangat Layanan' (reqing fuwu).Manajer di Harbin No. X juga membayar layanan bibir untuk pengertian ini baruLayanan. Di lantai penjualan di Harbin No. X, namun, gagasan reqingmengambil makna yang berbeda, yang terperangkap seperti di politikNostalgia dan apa mungkin dicirikan sebagai kelas pekerja ' strategirepresentasi ' (Rofel, 1999:135). Pada suatu waktu ketika banyak di Harbin menghadapiPHK dan pengangguran, penjualan petugas pertunjukan reqingLayananmenciptakan sebuah ruang sosial yang membangkitkan sifat-sifat positif yang terkait dengankelas pekerja di perkotaan, secara serentak menyatakan Harbin No. X perbedaan sebagaiserta nilai hubungan sosial kelas buruh. Hasilnya adalah sebuah poladan jangka waktu interaksi yang saya temukan di ada pengaturan ritel lainnya di Harbin.Secara harfiah, dengan istilah Cina 'reqing' berarti 'perasaan hangat' dan merujuk kepadaekspresi asli kehangatan dan antusiasme. Dalam kehidupan sehari-hari, katadigunakan untuk menggambarkan orang-orang jujur keramahan dan keramahan yang hangat, danorang-orang Cina Timur Laut memahami diri untuk menjadi terutamadiberkahi dengan kualitas ini menyambut dan kemurahan hati. Untuk kerjakelas, ekspresi reqing ini juga terkait dengan persepsi diri mereka sebagaijujur dan langsung (laoshidan zhishuai) orang. Namun, sementara sifat-sifatseperti laoshi('jujur', 'jujur') dan zhishuai ('langsung', 'terang') dapatmembawa konotasi negatif seperti itu, terutama di era reformasi, ' cerdik-Ness dan naif ' (Yang, 1994:66; untuk mencolok paralel di postsocialistPolandia, lihat Dunn, 1999), reqingperintah arti seragam positif.Seperti karakter dan budaya yang terkait erat denganbudaya kelas buruh yang bersahaja kota Timur Laut Cina, tercermin dalamcita-cita budaya William Jankowiak (1993) yang diidentifikasi dalam kelas buruhKelurahan di kota Huhhot Utara (Lihat juga bagian dan paroki,tahun 1984, pada hubungan pribadi dan 'etika pautnya' ditemukan di perkotaanCina). Demikian pula, unit kerja perkotaan tradisional, sering dikaitkan denganhubungan sosial yang despotik loyalism dan clientelism (Walder, 1986), yangsecara historis juga stabil masyarakat sangat personal hubungan. Pekerjaanunit terlibat 'harapan kesinambungan' yang mengakibatkan kuat, lama-hubungan jangka dan rasa kolektif kepentingan (Womack, 1991:328;Lihat juga Hertz, 2001; Li, 1993).Fitur ini positif, ideal yang terkait dengan kelas buruh pengaturan-kekuatan dari perasaan manusia dan kejujuran dan keterusteranganof social relationships – parallel the reform-era nostalgic themes describedby both Lisa Rofel (1999) and Guobin Yang (2003). In the 1980s, Rofelfound that older women factory workers harkened back to a pre-CulturalRevolution China when ‘an innocent state [was] at one with its citizens’(1999: 131), especially its workers.