Week 8
I’ve
recently been debating on whether to grow my hair long again, or if I should
keep it short. I kept putting off making any decision because part of me was
nervous about getting a hair cut in China. It’s not like I’m a boy and all I
have to say is: “Just make it short.” I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to
communicate what I wanted. But after three consecutive bad hair days, I decided
to bite the bullet and hope for the best. Besides, I’m going to be in a lot of
pictures in the months to come, I want to make sure I look good. I grow my hair
out again when I don't need to care about how it looks when it’s in those awkward middle stages. Just to be sure I got something close to what I wanted, I
found a picture of a similar hair style to what I had before and brought it
with me to show the stylist. Chen Rong went with me to the salon because Penny
was busy. And besides, she wanted to get her hair cut too. The place we went to
was much nicer than any salon I had ever been to. Chen Rong explained that it
was one of the nicer places in town but the hair cuts were still cheap. First
we got our hair cleaned. We had the option of a ‘wet clean’ or a ‘dry clean.’ I
didn’t understand the difference so I just chose the same as Chen Rong (dry
clean). They just applied some product to our dry hair and it lathered like
shampoo without water. The employees (who were all men, strangely) massaged my
scalp while working the product into my hair. Then we went and rinsed it out of
my hair. Since I couldn’t understand what he was saying to me, the employee had
to physically push and tug me into whatever sitting/laying back position he
needed me to be in. I felt bad for him, but at the same time this vocabulary
wasn’t covered in my class yet so what could I do? The next step was an upper
body massage including my neck, shoulders, arms and hands. I wasn’t expecting
it but after I got over my initial shock, I really enjoyed it. It was much
needed because I was still sore from riding horses and playing soccer. The hair
cut itself was in a different room from the massages. Again, all the actual
stylists were men. This was the first time a man had ever cut my hair so it was
a weird concept to wrap my head around. He was extremely focused on his task
and made sure to take his time. Or at least that’s what it felt like because it
was also the longest hair cut of my life. I think he had to focus more because
my hair is a different texture from Asian hair which he was used to working with.
I asked if he could give me some bangs like in the picture I had picked out. I
have a cowlick that usually prevents me from having bangs, but it was a part of
the picture I showed to him so I expected him to just imitate the picture. He
found the cowlick, however, and told Chen Rong that he couldn’t give me bangs because
of it. Chen Rong explained to me that the Chinese word for cowlick translates
to something beautiful. So to have a cowlick is like having a beauty mark in
Chinese culture. I am happy with how my hair turned out and now I know that I have
a reliable place to go to when I need to cut it again in a month or two.
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