Time for a haircut!
The young woman asked me, “How would you like it cut?”
“Anything is fine.”
In the mirror I saw that she looked a little troubled, so I added, “Just cut it short.”
I have never cared much about haircuts—what hairstyle, what fashion, none of it matters to me. Especially now that I am past seventy, with gray hair and a wrinkled face. What beauty is there left to fuss over?
I do not like barbers who slowly snip away at my head with little scissors. That kind of thing is guaranteed to hypnotize me until I start snoring. I prefer electric clippers—three quick cuts, five quick pushes, done. But please, never shave me bald. I have scars on my scalp left from childhood sores. Even Ah Q had his taboos. Why shouldn’t I?
I remember when I was young and my hair grew long, Father would hand me one rupee.
“Go get your hair cut. Your hair looks like a beggar’s.”
I would happily run to the barber stall on the next street. When Uncle Tim saw me, he placed a small wooden stool on top of his old barber chair and had me sit on it while he worked.
People said Uncle Tim had only recently come from Tangshan. He could not speak Burmese and had no money to start a business, so he set up a stall to make a living. He had very few customers, mostly children and old men. I went to Uncle Tim because he was cheap. A proper shop charged one rupee. Uncle Tim charged only half a rupee.
My uncle often said, “Tim knows how to cut hair? He doesn’t know how to cut anything!”
Once, after I came home from a haircut, my uncle laughed at me.
“Wow! What happened? Looks like a dog chewed it!”
In the mirror, the two sides of my head looked like a rice field just after harvest, uneven stubble everywhere.
Mother quickly tried to smooth things over.
“Doesn’t matter. In a few days it’ll grow even again.”
During the War of Resistance, when we fled back to Kunming, barber shops did not have electric fans. I heard some did, but electricity was expensive. Once I entered a shop and saw a boy about my age standing inside, pulling a large hanging screen back and forth with his hands to create a breeze. That was the “fan.”
I had my head lowered while the barber worked the hand clippers when suddenly I heard a shout:
“You want to die? Pull harder!”
From the mirror, I glanced sideways and saw the boy operating the “fan” slapped across the face by the owner. His tired eyelids opened wide in fright, and he quickly began pulling harder on the big screen hanging from the ceiling.
I thought he was very pitiful.
In the 1950s and 1960s, young people cared about styles called the “airplane” and the “atomic.” They liked to use hair wax and comb their hair high and shiny—so slick that even a fly landing on it would need a cane.
But I have always been casual. I preferred the “one-side sweep”—no part, just use the fingers to push the hair to one side. I did this partly because I was lazy. It was easy to wash and did not need combing. And partly because materials were scarce. Each person got only one soap coupon per month, not even enough for washing clothes.
In America, I sometimes went to a Mexican barber shop. The barber would ask what kind of cut I wanted. I did not know how to explain, so I pointed at photographs on the wall or simply said:
“Cut it short, okay!”
As long as it was short, I did not care about the style.
Sometimes the Mexican barber would point to the haircut of a young man nearby: both sides of the head shaved bare, then abruptly a ring of long black hair beginning at the top. It was a fashionable style for young people, but I found it ugly.
The barber asked whether I wanted that cut.
“No,” I said. “I am not a kid!”
Originally published in Ming Daily, March 20, 2002.