My Haircut

 

This weekend, I went to Guangzhou to visit my grandmother. Since there wasn’t much to do after dinner, I decided to get a trim at the local hair salon. Nothing fancy, just a little shop that could probably take care of 5 or 6 customers at a time. The moment I walked in, a lady rushed up asking if I wanted a hair wash. It turns out that having a professional hair wash is a service people indulged in. As I laid on a massage table with a sink attached, the lady washed my hair along with a soft head massage. It was definitely a rare luxury I have never experience. It does help to have my head massaged. However, what confused me was that the lady spent over 30 minutes washing my hair, shampooing and conditioning it 3 times. When I asked her what is going on (I was confused on why my hair needed to be washed multiple times), she replied “oh, you mean you don’t want to continue washing it?” It seems that it’s a thing here people do multiple shampoo sessions during a professional hair washing session.

Culturally, the hair salon is quintessential Chinese. The lady that washed my hair started by asking me about my hair, what products I used, moved onto how old I was, where I was born, am I in school, where do I live, where does my parents live, what do I do, how much is my rent to Hong Kong, and how much I made monthly. The last two questions, I didn’t even know how to answer and tried to ignored it. However, she kept on pushing! She probably would make a great member of the FBI personal background investigation team. If I answered all her questions, she would have known me better than most of my friends in the U.S.

 After my hair washing session, I sat down in a hair dresser’s chair. A guy about my age dressed in the most non-gay, metrosexual way I have ever seen came behind me to cut my hair. Like any hair dresser, he commented about my hair, I told him I just wanted a trim with a blow dry to make my hair straight. The great thing about being in China is that the hair dressers only deal with Asian hair, and knows exactly what to do. My hair dresser was not only good, but one of the most meticulous hair dressers I have ever met. Instead of using the sheared scissors for layering and thinning Asian hair, my hair dresser did it piece by piece with a regular scissors. Then, he blew dry my hair four different times to make sure the hair is perfectly straight. He even wanted to use an hair straightener to straighten my perfectly blown straight hair, saying that there was a little bit at the end that was not perfectly straight. I felt tired just looking at his meticulous work and politely told him that the hair was perfectly fine and I didn’t need any further straightening. My hair right now is probably the straightest it has ever been my entire life.

Of course, my conversation with the hairdresser also got intense. He wasn’t as prodding about my life as the lady. He seemed a bit more shy. Since my uncle was with me, he kept on mentioning him. At first, with all the background noise of hair washing, blow drying, and people coming in and out, I didn’t realize what my hair dresser referred my uncle as. After a few minutes of conversation, I realized my hair dresser thought my 45-year-old uncle was my husband. When I corrected him, he turned tomato-red and apologized profusely. Then he tried to tell me that my uncle looked young, and he sees many old-men, young-girls couples around, etc. I almost felt bad for correcting him because he was so embarrassed.

After all this, the hair cut was only about $6 USD equivalent. When I tried to tip my hairdresser (he kind of endeared me during the hour-long blow dry session), he refused twice before I convinced him that I just thought he did a good job. Finally he accepted about $4 USD equivalent of tips.