BEIJING - For my first haircut as a Beijing resident, I walked over to a narrow alley near Tsinghua's West Gate. Vendors lined the street, selling cold noodles, grilled tofu and cheap phone cards so migrant workers can talk to family in Shangdong, Shanxi or Hubei.
My salon appeared to have no name. Instead two barber poles, each with a strip of neon pink in the middle, marked the entrance. Inside two red barber chairs were near center on the red wall. Both chairs were occupied by young Chinese women, hair half in curls, half flowing two feet towards the floor. Cutting their hair were two fashionably dressed men who looked related. One had his hair dyed platinum blonde, the other wore his in a mullet.
"I'd like a haircut," I said.
The blonde-haired man pointed me to a folding chair in the salon's back right corner. This was the salon's waiting room. I took out Chekov's "Uncle Vanya," and started to read about life on a nineteenth-century Russian estate. A portable boom-box blasted out Hong Kong techno; one of the customers sang along to most of the lyrics in impressive Cantonese.
I read halfway through Act Three before the blonde barber called me over to the table. "How do you want your hair?" he said.
My hair vocabulary hasn't improved in the last month. "Not too short," is still all I have.
The barber took off, trimming, cutting, snipping and clipping my hair for the next 45 minutes. After the second blow-dry, he allowed me to put my glasses back on. My hair had been thrown in two different directions - something I think maybe called a "weave" in salon terms. There just wasn't very much of it - perhaps a quarter of an inch on top. I thanked the barber and got out of the salon before he decided to take any more of my hair.
The next day I came to class with my newly scalped top to find that the only two other white men in the class with the same 'do. All three of us sought out small salons around the West Gate, and all were left with little hair to show for it.
"Haircuts" is an infrequent series about haircuts, the people who give them and the styles they dish out.
