Chinese Haircut

So you want to get your hair cut in China? Not too hard to find a barbershop, just look for the spinning poles outside. No wait, some barbershops are massage parlors that offer special massages. Better look for one where you can see people actually getting their haircut! OK, now that you have located a functional barbershop, all you need to ask is (phonetically) – KNEE SHOUWA YING U MA? About three-quarters of the time, you will get blank or horrified stares, meaning that they don’t speak English and it is time for the old sign language experience. They take your coat and put a lab coat type thing on you and if you are lucky, they have a menu with English on it. So you point to shampoo and hair cut, they hand you a magazine to read – you got to wonder what is going through their heads when you just went through the whole “I don’t speak Chinese” routine and they hand you a magazine in which the only English is in the title – and the process begins. You are seated in a typical stylist chair and they start to shampoo your hair. Notice I said nothing about a sink or water. They use a small squirt bottle, some shampoo and manage to work up a rather large amount of lather that they are apparently trying to work down into the third or fourth epidermal layer. Then they take you and your foam-covered head back to be rinsed off. This part is just like at home, lay back in a chair made for people that are 5’4” and lay back with you head on a block. Apparently, it takes a lot of rinsing & rubbing and rubbing & rinsing to get the shampoo out of your skull. Then they wrap your wet hair up in a towel like a turban and take you back to the stylist chair. Here’s the part where it gets weird. The next step is to clean our your ears. That’s what I said – clean your ears. Not the outside, the inside. The person gets out a supply of Q-tips and does your ears for you. I haven’t had my ears cleaned since my mother did it when I was in grade school! OK, you make it through that and then the massage starts. They begin on the top and work all over your head, temples, forehead, eyebrows, behind your ears, under your chin, your cheek bones and then back to the top where they start slapping the back of one hand with the other in the same rhythm that you would make when you are trying to sound like a horse galloping. Finally the massage is done – wrong! – it just moves down to your neck, shoulder blades, back, lower back then back to the shoulder blades with the horse gallop again. Now it is time to get your shoulders, arms, elbows, forearms, wrists, hands, palms and each joint of each finger massaged. I am now out of body parts that I am willing let some guy massage while sitting in the front window in the local neighborhood shopping center. At last, he is done and I get to move to where it appears I will be getting my hair actually cut – first clue; 25-lbs (11-kg) of dark brown hair all over the floor. I explain, or actually gesture, what I want done. Pick up the hair on top, and show that I want about an inch (25-mm) taken off of it. Pick up the hair over the ears, and then point to the top of the ear and make a cutting motion with my fingers. Then back to the Bozo curls on the sides, behind and below the ears. Pick up the curls, trace it with my finger, then make a scissor cutting motion just before where the curl starts in earnest. Then I picked up the hair on the very back and moved my fingers about two-inches (50-mm) apart. The stylist has nodded after each instruction. Now I know that it’s got to be my fault for not speaking Chinese, but nowhere in my gesturing did I say taper the back from about 1-inch (25-mm) at the swirl down to shaving the nape of the neck with a straight razor! The sides were cut up over the ears but it damn sure isn’t going to touch the ears anyway shape or form. At least they didn’t cut anything off of the top! She took the barber cloth off and I started to take off the barber coat, but no, she’s not done yet! I have to go back to the shampoo sink to get all of the loose hair washed out and have my head rubbed & rinsed and rinsed & rubbed again, another turban and them back to the chair for the blow drying. Finally, 1-hour and 48-minutes after I first sat down in the chair, I give the cashier my 40RMB ($4.86) and walked out into the fifth coldest day we have had this year looking forward to my 10-minute electric-bike ride through the drizzle back to the apartment with less hair on my head than since before I met Mona. Hey, I got a month & a-half before the wedding! It’ll grow out and should be just about right.