Review of the Year - OMG recommends....

The double-whammy of demanding in-laws and a new job have, unfortunately, kept the delightful OMG away from blogging for much of this year - a great pity, since she is one of the best writers I've found out there. She has, however, been gracious enough to respond to my request for a blog post recommendation for this Review of the Year series.

As a stylish and beautiful young woman, she naturally takes a keen interest in hair, and she tells me that she therefore particularly likes my intermittent series of posts on the trials of getting a haircut in this country. I rather suspect she had in mind this one, which is from 2007. However, this one from early this year is quite good too, I think; though not as good as this one of OMG's, a true classic of the genre!

More haircut blues

first posted on 14th March

There is a superstition in China that it is bad luck for a man to get his hair cut during the first month of the new year in the Chinese lunar calendar: specifically, dire things could happen to your mother's brother as a result. Even if your mother doesn't have a brother, or he's dead already, or you can't stand the old fart - well, this is an ancient tradition, and not something you should mess with. It seems somehow reckless of yours and your family's good fortune to take risks with this kind of thing (although one suspects this is a tradition that has been vigorously promoted over the years by the hairdressers, so that they can take a longer holiday at this time of year).

This is one of those odd little local customs that rather charms me, and that it amuses me to observe - even though there is really no reason at all why I should, and it is today widely falling into disuse even among the natives.

And, for some reason that escapes me, I didn't quite get around to getting my hair cut on the weekend before the Chinese New Year holiday got underway; and have thus had to bide my time until it becomes 'safe' to go back to the barbers again, although my hair was becoming uncomfortably shaggy.

I had thought that last Friday would be my first 'opportunity' to get my hair cut. But I had been basing that on the erroneous belief that lunar months are 28 days long. I have recently learned that, at least according to the Chinese lunar calendar, they are strictly based on the appearance of the new moon - and this is usually at 29-day intervals. Moreover, it seems that the 'prohibition' on haircuts actually goes beyond the first month: the 2nd day of the 2nd lunar month is the 'Dragon Raises Its Head' Festival - birthday of Earth-god Tudigong, the real advent of Spring, and....... the most auspicious day in the entire year for a man to get his hair cut.

I had anticipated that the end of the superstitious haircut embargo would occasion a huge run on the barbershops, and for that reason had not bothered to check one out on Friday - which I mistakenly thought to be THE DAY. I had to work most of the weekend, so didn't get a chance to try for the haircut until Sunday afternoon...... and so discovered, by unhappy accident, all this nonsense about the Dragon waking up and getting skittish as a kitten: every hairdresser's shop in my neighbourhood was packed to the rafters. Sigh.

So, I've had to let it go nearly another week, and have only just now got myself a trim. I am mightily relieved to have shed some of that weighty and unruly thatch and to be feeling once more a little more like my 'ideal self' at last.

I am rather concerned, though, that the too-good-to-be-true hairdresser's I discovered just around the corner a few months back already appears to be 'going through changes'. Maybe it's just that all the staff change their own hairstyles every few days and thus seem perpetually unfamiliar to you (and, well, I've only been in there 2 or 3 times before, the last one a couple of months ago; so, there's very little chance that I'd recognise any of the people there anyway), but it didn't seem like the same place at all. A very slow, fussy, reluctant-to-actually-remove-any-hair kind of cut, no chirpy English-speaking girl hovering around to help out.

Still, it hasn't turned out too badly. It's not as short as I like it, but it looks reasonably neat. The guy seems to have done some weird kind of layering thing with it, leaving it progressively longer towards the back of my head. I suspect this may be a prudent stratagem to help conceal my rapidly thinning crown. However, it feels to me too much as if it is likely to develop into a mullet if I leave it unattended to for more than about 4 weeks (my hair is nothing but a trial to me: that which does not fall out grows unreasonably quickly).