Best Haircut in China by James Joaquin Brewer

Despite having glanced through a fair number of both “touristy” and “business-savvy” guidebooks regarding travel tips for first-timers to China, I definitely did not know what to expect—politically, culturally, socially, nutritionally—during my visit to Beijing.

On my first morning there, a Sunday, I appreciated having a free day ahead of myself to recover from jet lag and get ready for the first day of work at the office on Monday. My adventure that Sunday afternoon was memorable for reasons having little to do with the business purpose of my trip, beyond my deciding that I was in need of a haircut and that getting it taken care of before the first meeting with the Beijing internal audit team was probably a tactically wise thing to do. After an enjoyable breakfast in my “westernized” hotel—one catering especially to European and North American visitors on business trips—I left the dining area and walked over to the concierge desk in the spacious lobby. I told the young Chinese woman there that I was curious as to whether there was a hair-cutting salon in or near the hotel. Her red-lipsticked mouth opened in a pleasing smile as she nodded affirmatively. “Not in hotel today,” she said, “but walking distance to very, very good one.” She pulled a neighborhood street map from her desk, turned it over to display the blank side, and wrote in neat capital letters: BEIJING FOOTBALL CLUB.

“Football?” I said, laughing. “Maybe you misunderstood my question.” (Was it possible this had something to do with soccer matches in the upcoming Olympic games that China was hoping to host?)

She laughed back. “Oh, no, sir. It’s building name. You want haircut? Yes?”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“Then suggest Beijing Football Club. My friends say best haircut in China.” She started drawing a simple street map on the blank sheet in front of her.

“How long will it take to get there?” I asked. “I’d like to get a bit of exercise rather than take a taxi.”

She put some final touches on her customized map and handed it to me. “Okay,” she said. “Easy to follow. Walking for less than half hour. Seeing neighborhood sights along the way.”

Her tone was so positive, so friendly, so somehow inspiring . . . I figured I was willing to walk at least thirty-one minutes to get the best haircut in China. I looked down at the map, looked up at her, waved, and said, “Thank you for your help!”

“When you return, please . . .” She paused and glanced down shyly. “Maybe you let me see your new haircut?”

“If it’s as good as you say it will be, I will be happy to,” I agreed.

“Have a good Sunday,” she said, raising her eyes and giving me one more cheerful smile.

When I returned to Boston, I would tell my wife that while I could not claim with certainty that going to the Beijing Football Club guarantees a traveler the best haircut in China, I could assert with confidence that (a) I received one of the best haircuts I have ever had anywhere, and (b) it was the most interesting haircut experience I will likely ever have.

After about twenty minutes of walking, guided by the easy-to-follow map sketched by my delightful concierge, I found an old brick building on a dead-end street whose exterior surfaces showed not one word about hair or hair cutting, at least not in English—but neither did I think I saw any Chinese writing symbols. At the top of the building, however, several feet above the entrance door and just below the low roof’s overhanging rain gutters, I saw a rectangular ceramic sign hanging from sturdy black wires proclaiming in painted English letters of dark blue against a tan background BEIJING FOOTBALL CLUB. Still wondering why there was a reference to football (presumably soccer)—something I had not wanted to take time to discuss in detail with the concierge—I cautiously opened the old-metal and old-glass door and ventured inside. In the small vestibule, there was a long wooden counter painted red with glittery gold highlights. It held a vase of flowers at one end and a swirling electrical fan at the other. A middle-aged woman with long black hair arose from a padded stool behind the counter and smiled at me. She was wearing (what I later learned to call) a cheongsam dress of green and white.

“Hello,” I said, glancing up above her head at a sign on the wall covered with Chinese writing. I was wondering if it contained pricing information. If I were about to request the best haircut in China, I would be well-advised to know if there were any budgetary implications.

She continued smiling. “You?” She nodded her head up and down. “You want . . .” She held out two fingers in the form of scissors and pretended to trim her hair.

“Yes,” I said. “Haircut, please.”

“Good!” she said. “Right place!” She leaned her upper body slightly forward in a gesture that was possibly not a “bow” exactly but probably promised to convey a similar message. “A moment, sir. Wait, please.”

She pushed through a beaded curtain that led to the hair-cutting stations. I could glimpse her calling a few apparently unoccupied employees together in what reminded me (appropriately) of a football huddle. After the little conference concluded, she came back through the curtain, stepped to its side to hold it open for me, then led me by the arm into the fragrant inner sanctum of the Beijing Football Club. Two young women greeted me with definite bows and broad smiles. The taller of the two helped me out of my black sports coat, and the shorter one led me to a barber chair in the center of the room and seated me. The taller woman, having carefully hung my coat on a tall wooden rack, returned to turn down the collar of my white shirt. Following that, the shorter woman draped a silky cloth covered with images of little red dragons over my chest and shoulders before tying it behind my neck. The taller woman held a mirror in front of my face and said, “Wash?”

I smiled, nodded, and said, “Yes, please.”

“Thank you,” she said, reaching out her hand to mine. “Come.”

She escorted me to a third young woman who was standing at a shampoo station. Unlike the other women I had seen, she was not wearing a fashionable dress. Instead, she wore loose trousers of what looked like dark-blue denim and a white blouse with brown wooden buttons down the front. She rolled the sleeves of her blouse partway up her arms and bowed. I half-bowed back, sat in the leather-seated chair, leaned my head back toward the sink, and soon felt the rush of warm water. “Hot? Cold? Okay?” Her voice was timid, almost fragile.

“Just right,” I said. “Okay. Good.”

“Thank you, sir,” she whispered.

For the next thirty minutes or so—definitely longer than the time it had taken me to walk to the Beijing Football Club from the hotel—she massaged my wet scalp and hair with a pleasantly mysterious aromatic shampoo. Her hands were small and her fingers delicate. Her technique, however, was magical. I was being cured of jet lag, becoming totally relaxed, feeling I had not a care in the world, and would have fallen asleep if halfway through this peaceful ritual she had not started speaking—to ask me a favor.

“Excuse, please, sir.” The timidity in her voice was even more pronounced.

“Yes?” I smiled, trying to be encouraging.

“You U.S.A.?”

“Yes,” I said. “I live in Boston.”

She seemed to frown. “Umm,” she mumbled.

“Not too far from New York,” I said.

She stopped frowning. Her eyes seemed to light up. “New York. Yes!”

“I live Beijing,” she said. “Now. Starting yesterday. I come from village far away. Other piece of China. My English so bad.” She laughed nervously and increased the pressure of her fingers on my wet scalp.

“Oh, no,” I objected. “Not so bad!”

“So, I . . .” She paused and giggled. “Ask you . . .I wish help.”

“Yes? How?” I was immediately curious.

“While washing hair, can practice English with you?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s practice.”

And so, for the next fifteen minutes, she tried to tell me about her situation in life. I did not really “help” with her English beyond a few simple pronunciation “corrections.” I learned she was nineteen years old, had grown up in some small, obscure village far away from larger towns or cities, and had been sent to Beijing by her farming family to (in my words) “learn a trade.” She was living in an apartment building in Beijing with some of her mother’s cousins. Apparently, I was the first person to whom she had given a shampoo in the Beijing Football Club, after having had a training session the day before. By the time she finished rinsing my hair, her voice was no longer timid.

After she used a white linen towel to partially dry my hair, I was expecting her to leave it damp for cutting; so I was surprised when she plugged in an electrical hand-held appliance and thoroughly dried every hair on my head, all the while “practicing” her English. When she was finished, she said, “Thank you for practice.” I stood up and said, “Welcome.” She smiled, bowed, and signaled to the two women who had greeted me earlier. They came over to escort me back to the main chair.

I was wondering which of the two would actually cut my hair, but I was soon surprised again. After I was settled in the chair—the only customer in the place—I watched a new employee enter the scene: a middle-aged man with an elaborate gray-and-black mustache appeared seemingly out of nowhere, holding a pair of gleaming silver scissors in one hand and carrying a long-handled mirror in the other. He was dressed in dark slacks and a buttoned-up top that resembled the stiff white coat one sees on a master chef in an expensive restaurant. I soon learned he spoke no English. (Or perhaps he was actually mute?)

The taller of the two women stood directly in front of me, smiled, placed two fingers of each hand in the hair above my ears, and said, “Short?” I nodded up and down and said, “Yes, please.” Next, she moved her fingers to the back of my neck and said, “Stay long?” I shook my head back and forth and said, “No, please. Short is okay.” The other woman immediately sprayed my hair from a water bottle—making it wet all over again despite the drying efforts of my English-practicing friend—and said something in Chinese to the man with the scissors. He smiled at me and bowed.

And for a period of time far exceeding what it had taken me to walk to the Beijing Football Club, I experienced a new approach to the services one can receive in a hair-cutting salon. My “chef” cut my hair one strand at a time while the two women stood near and observed. His method was highly defined: first, he would hold the mirror in front of me to provide a “before” image; second, he would hand the mirror to one of the two women assisting him; third, he would insert those surgical scissors between two or three strands of my hair and snip one of them; fourth, he would take back the mirror from one of his assistants; fifth, he would place the mirror in front of me again to prove an “after” image; sixth, he would raise his eyebrows interrogatively. I would then nod in agreement, allowing the cycle to repeat.

Somehow, after more than half an hour of this process, when he held out the mirror for the final time, I saw an “after” image representing one of the best haircuts I had ever received. Thinking that from a business-process audit perspective, this was “inefficient-but-effective,” I stood up, hoping to pay my bill and return to the hotel. But no, of course, there was another surprise. I was escorted once again to the shampoo station, where English would be practiced for another ten minutes. This time, I learned that my blue-trousered friend was glad to have left her village because it was frequently in the path of intense dust storms that scoured unprotected skin and led to coughing and sneezing. Using the simplest English I could, I tried to express my sympathies.

But I was distracted: I was admitting to myself that I had no idea how much “the best haircut in China” was going to cost me—and was worried that the local yuan currency in my wallet might not be enough! How embarrassing this could be! (I would have failed myself in a personal process audit!)

There would be two more surprises inside the Beijing Football Club and a third outside as I walked back to the hotel and observed some “neighborhood sights” as promised by my concierge.

When I returned to the vestibule to settle accounts with the woman behind the counter, I took out my wallet and pointed up to the board where I assumed the pricing was explained. I smiled in as friendly a way as I knew how and asked, “How much?”

“No charge,” she said.

That made no sense at all. I raised my eyebrows. “What? I don’t understand.”

She laughed. She covered her mouth with her hand. She took her hand away. She laughed again. “You are first American ever to have haircut in Beijing Football Club. Is our honor.”

I was culturally and ethically confused. I had no idea how to appropriately respond.

She reached under the counter and took out a fairly large leather-bound book. I assumed it was a receipt ledger of some kind. I was wrong. It was an autograph book! “Please be kind as to sign,” she said, pushing it toward me and handing me a golden-barreled fountain pen.

I hesitated. “Only if you let me pay something,” I said.“Something like American ‘tips’ for your great . . . team.”

I was not sure if she understood my intended negotiating tactic, but she smiled again and said, “Maybe okay.”

I signed “Lee Bay, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.” in her autograph book and slid it back over the counter to her. She looked at what I had written and said, “Good. Very good.”

I removed over half of the Chinese currency in my wallet and put it neatly on top of the autograph book.

“No necessary,” she said.

“I insist,” I said. I smiled, waved, turned quickly, and turned to the door of the Beijing Football Club. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I was glad to see she was waving also. With a second (longer) glance as I stepped to the sidewalk, I was even more glad to see she was still waving—with her right hand, while the left was holding up and extending the autograph book as the “chef” with the silver shears came through the curtain to examine it.

The next surprise awaiting me—an unexpected “neighborhood sight”—occurred about halfway back to the hotel when I spied what I later learned was one of Beijing’s “traveling barbers.” It seemed more than a coincidence that I would see him just after getting China’s best haircut at the Beijing Football Club. . .But, of course, the rational nook in my brain admits that it was, as the saying goes, “mere coincidence.” (I would see others of this one’s brethren during my time in Beijing.) He was carrying a small wooden chair with one hand and had a medium-sized tote sack over the opposite shoulder. And as he walked, he held high in the air a pair of scissors which he waved in the direction of the many pedestrians on the sidewalk. I slowed my pace to see what might happen and was rewarded after a couple of minutes when an older man flagged the barber down with a zig-zag motion of his open hand. Quickly, the barber placed the chair down in the middle of the sidewalk, took a plain white cloth from his tote sack, waited for his new customer to sit down, wrapped the cloth around the man’s trunk, and proceeded to give him not the best haircut in China but certainly one of the fastest. (I noticed that he had not used a mirror, but I assumed he had one in his sack in case customer satisfaction depended on it.) After the customer paid and left, the barber pulled a small yellow whisk broom from his pants pocket and a folded piece of gray paper from his shirt pocket. He unfolded the paper, placed it next to the cut hairs on the sidewalk, swept the hairs onto the paper with the little broom, re-folded the paper to enclose its contents, then walked over to a nearby trash barrel and dropped it inside.

On my last day of stay during this first trip to China, I made sure to pay a farewell visit to the helpful concierge. “Good to see you,” she said, laughing. “I am so happy to see you have the best haircut in China. My great uncle is so skillful with his scissors!”