This is the first of a two-part series on the culture of China’s e-commerce industry.

First-time shoppers on Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Taobao are often caught off-guard by the disarming tone of stores’ customer service staff. In contrast to the occasionally brusque approaches found elsewhere online, customer service workers on these platforms can seem almost sickeningly sweet. Their most common form of address for clients is qin, short for qinaide, or “beloved.” Sometimes they’ll drop in the even cutesier qinqin, or “sweetie.” Other stores go further, calling their customers xiaojiejie (“little sister”), xiaogege (“little brother”), or even zhuren (“master”) or dianxia (“Your Highness”).

At first glance, the reason for using these kinds of affectionate nicknames seems clear: stores hope to bridge the gap with their customers and emphasize their willingness to serve. By using terms like zhuren or dianxia, the customer is elevated, while the merchant or customer service agent is reduced to the status of humble servant. As a result, customers come away from the interaction with a positive feeling about the business and are more willing to shop there again. Over time, the cutesy language became something of an arms race; as the practice spreads, more stores have felt the need to adopt similar expressions to keep buyers happy.

Interestingly, however, these terms of address are not gender-neutral. Using affectionate nicknames is usually seen in China as a feminine trait, and the use of such pet names is considered appropriate for women in the country’s predominantly female e-commerce industry workforce. In addition to fawning epithets, many customer service staff will also adopt a cute, playful, or otherwise feminine tone to appear caring and friendly to buyers.

But there’s a notable problem with using gender-coded language in customer service: not everyone is a fan of the gender norms — or the false sense of intimacy — it represents. On social media, users will sometimes sarcastically mimic the liberal use of terms like qin by e-commerce customer service staff.

That made me wonder: How do people inside the e-commerce industry feel about qin and other similar terms. For example, were workers adept at using this method of communication? What about male customer service agents? Did they also say qin? And how would customer service staff respond when a customer was indifferent or even hostile to such language?

To start, not all women working as e-commerce merchants or customer service personnel are happy about or even capable of using gender-coded communication methods. Before opening her online store, one interviewee, Zhong, said she took part in a training course where she was taught to use qin or qinqin when addressing potential customers. However, she felt it was “too cringey” and couldn’t bring herself to type it. (To protect the identities of my research participants, I have given them all pseudonyms.)

Why do I have to use those words to come across as sincere, Zhong wondered. For a long time, she resisted saying qin, instead using more formal terms like zunjingde guke (“respected customer”). Ironically, she finally dropped her insistence when a customer called her “qin” in a message: “I realized that it’s probably just a shared language between a lot of sellers and buyers,” Zhong said. “It’s just a name — there’s no need to overthink it. So, I started using it after that.”

As for men, the use of feminine-coded language is not always the hurdle it may seem. Indeed, some men in the industry are so adept at using these terms that customers don’t necessarily even realize that the person they are talking to is male. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that they are comfortable with it right from the get-go. Zhu started out in the industry as a customer service agent. He was trained to address customers as qinqin and to adopt a cute tone in customer service interactions. Although he worried that this kind of speaking was “girly,” his boss reminded him that customers had no idea if he was a man or a woman — and there was no need to worry about being exposed. In the end, Zhu relented, and when he later opened his own store, he instructed his customer service staff to adopt a softer tone, saying it would make them seem friendlier.

The willingness of male customer service agents to use feminine-coded language also reflects broader social trends. As one interviewee, a college student and content creator, put it: “Nowadays, men can use cute ways of speaking too. Calling someone of the opposite sex, or even the same sex, xiaojiejie or xiaogege is pretty common.” In popular culture and on the dating market, acting cute and being clingy does not necessarily make someone “sissy.” On the contrary, men who act in such a way are sometimes described as “puppy-like,” a quality that is not just acceptable but even desirable in contemporary China. In other words, even if a customer service agent clearly identifies himself as male, clients will not look askance at them if they use language more commonly associated with women in order to facilitate the transaction.

On the other hand, sometimes feminine-coded language can cause customer service agents to hit a wall. Lin, who runs an online storefront, recalled a time she sent an opening message to one customer, who curtly replied, “Don’t try and pretend like we’re friends.” This kind of reply is a red flag for Lin, causing her to immediately shelve her overtly friendly tone and proceed cautiously. “That kind of customer is really troublesome,” she explained, adding that such transactions often carry a higher risk of bad reviews.

The ways that merchants and customer support staff adjust their language depending on a customer’s responses shows that customer service interactions on e-commerce platforms are more varied than their social media parodies might suggest. Those working in online commerce are not robots mindlessly repeating a list of overly friendly buzzwords in every conversation; instead, they adopt, abandon, or adapt their language for different clients.

This is perhaps best illustrated by one male online vendor I met who sells adult products. “Some of the people who buy our products are really shy, and some are more forward,” he explained. “So I’ll guide them in making an order according to their personal style.” If qin is a kind of role-play, some players embrace the game.

Translator: David Ball; editor: Cai Yineng.

(Header image: Visuals from VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)