Ma Haiyan, manager of the gifts and crafts department of the Orient Shopping Center in Shanghai, has grown from a saleswoman to a manager on the frontline of retail services. The honors she has received bears testimony to her hard work: Model Worker of Shanghai, Model Female Worker of China, Female Pacesetter of China, Star Commercial Service Worker of China, Model Worker of China, representative of the 16th and 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, to name but a few.

Ma Haiyan, manager of the gifts and crafts department of the Orient Shopping Center in Shanghai, is one of the torch bearers in  Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. [Photo from sinomach.com.cn]

For over a decade in the selling of diamonds and jewelry for the Orient Shopping Center, Ma became a skillful professional thanks to her perseverance and tenacity. With a trained eye, she can estimate with a small margin of error the weight of each diamond simply by observation, tell their purity, gold or silver percentage and flaws, and carry out a valuation of different kinds of jewelry. By self-study, she stood out from her peers by having been certified as a senior jewelry appraiser by HRD in Antwerp, Belgium.

Ma Haiyan has grown from a saleswoman to a manager on the frontline of retail services. [Photo from sinomach.com.cn]

Through long experience in the business, “forever diamonds, forever friends” has become Ma’s working motto and conduct code. When working as a saleswoman, Ma once received a letter from a completely strange old lady in her eighties asking whether Ma could repair her fractured ring a wedding ring that had kept her company for nearly seven decades. Then Ma immediately contacted the old lady, by dialing the telephone number left in the letter, for detailed information she failed to offer about the ring’s material and damages.

The old lady was surprised by Ma’s phone call, for she didn’t expect such a quick reply. After a talk over the phone, Ma learnt more about the ring and promised the old lady a repaired ring would be as good as new. The next day, the old lady’s daughter came to Ma at the Orient Shopping Center with the ring as well as the regards from her mother. A few days later, Ma delivered her promise by handing back the repaired, carefully cleansed ring to the daughter.

As a trump card for the Orient Shopping Center, Ma is an icon, a beacon and a source of strength. With a diamond-like personality, she endeavored, in a tireless, step-by-step manner, to bring warmth and surprises time and time again to the customers. “Diamonds are meant to be forever.” said Ma, “And I’m meant to be a forever friend.”