Barbering

I had been avoiding a visit to hair dresser in China for nine months. I have been to hair dresser many times since my move to Shanghai, namely every time I have visited Finland. Bad news for me, or my hair, was that I am not going back to Finland before May. And I cannot NOT get my hair done in 5 months. No can do. It is not that my hair is so perfect. Quite the opposite, actually. But I don't want to make a bad situation any worse.

And it is not that I think Chinese don't know how to cut or colour hair. It is just that Chinese hair is very different from mine. If there is something I generally envy from the Chinese, it is their hair. Majority of Chinese have strong (unlike mine), thick (unlike mine), naturally beautiful color hair (unlike mine). Hair that doesn't frizz at the humidity of the summer months (unlike mine). The local hairdressers are not used to handling our northern European hairtype.

For hair cut or color, I have been going to the same Place for... almost ten years. Which is quite long considering my years. Now I had to face the dragon, and try something new. I decided to do so with a friend who had already been in this Shanghai-place for couple of times. Tiffany's, it's called. I just hate going to a new hair dresser. Anywhere. I hate telling the stylist (or designer, as they were called here in Shanghai) what I want. Of course that was not much of a problem since my chinese-skills don't really enable me to depict in any detail the hairstyle I want... But overall, I want my stylist to suggest what to do, and I want to be able to trust him (her) so I don't have to be afraid while waiting for the result. I want to be able to r e l a x when I am in that chair. And I absolutely want to be in and out in 1,5 hours or less.

So of we went, last Saturday. The place was huuuge. And noisy. And I could feel my palms getting all swetty and cold. I decided to try to explain that I'd like some highlights, like the ones that I had already. The girl started to show very very thin (about five hairs) strings, which was not at all what I wanted. I tried to show her that I want wide, but thin section of hair colored, under the top layer, so that it is not so obvious. Nothing too geometrical for me. And she showed me a picture where a girl had a five centimeter wide bright red area in her otherwise black hair. After which I noticed that I had been mistaken: I actually didn't want any highlights. I don't know why I thought I wanted in the first place...

I became sligthly more agitated when they put the color to my hair, and I mean hair, rather than to the roots (which needed the color). As a matter a fact, they left the roots totally unattended at this point, and told they will do something with them after 20 minutes. I made lame attempts to explain that where I come from, we do the roots first and then the rest... but I should have made more powerful attempts: both of us, me and my friend, had red roots and much darker locks. The designer came to see our hair and said "ke yi", which means "It's ok". No, mister, it is not. So, we had to go through another coloring.

End results is ok, but I ended up loosing 5 centimeter from the length of my hair, which was not the plan (don't you people understand what "duan yi dian dian", "shorten just a little", means? Maybe he just didn't want to understand? Artistical freedom and all that...) and three hours, which also was not the plan.

But I got to watch the most amazing things they were doing there: Chinese ladies' heads were wrapped to anything and everything between towels, cling wrap, folio, plastic and some kind of foam plastic, and a mixture of those. Plus rolls. Many of them looked like aliens while in process. Plus the designers were funny to watch: s0 very, very stylish and cool with their shades and drastic hairstyles :o)

But... I don't want to think about what I am going to do after 6-7 weeks when it would be time to go back. It makes me uneasy.