05.24.10
Posted in Announcements, Barbershop at 6:04 pm by Benjamin Ross
As most readers know, this past winter I went through the process of applying to Sociology PhD programs. One requirement for all applications was a writing sample, preferably of an academic paper. Looking back through my files from undergrad years, I realized that most of what I had written back when I was in college (I graduated in 2003) wouldn’t suffice for the type of grad programs I was applying to. Since I wanted to focus my graduate studies on the urbanization of China, and to do so using ethnographic field methods, I decided to write a paper from scratch based on my experiences working in a Chinese barbershop. Now that the process is over, I’ve put the paper online in PDF format. You can access it at the link below. If anybody has any trouble viewing the file, please send me a note in the comments section.
http:/www.benross.net/images/blog%20images/10-05-24_essay/making_the_cut.pdf
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08.05.08
Posted in Barbershop, Fujian at 11:07 pm by Benjamin Ross
For those of you who have kept up with this blog over the past two years, you probably remember when I worked at the Red Sun* barbershop for a month in May of 2007. With 8/8/08 rapidly approaching, I decided to spend my last week of pre-Olympic vacation in Fuzhou, my former Chinese stomping grounds. Of course, a trip back to Fuzhou wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the barbershop.
Since I had last been in Fuzhou, much has changed at the Red Sun. For one thing, only two of the little brothers who were at the Red Sun when I was employed are still there. The rest have either moved on to work in other shops, or completely different lines of work altogether. Several of the former Red Sun employees are now working in Ding Chuang, a new barbershop Mr. Zheng has opened just five minutes away from the Red Sun. Mr. Zheng has also installed Internet enabled computers in both of the barbershops. At first, employees were allowed to use them, but only when no customers were in the shop. Since some employees were abusing the privilege, Mr. Zheng decided to forbid them to be used by anyone except customers, enforceable by a 50 RMB fine. Mr. Zheng also plans to completely remodel The Red Sun next month. All employees will receive an unprecedented 2 week vacation, but unfortunately won’t be able to get paid for any of it.
I spent most of my week catching up with all my former co-workers, and here’s a little wrap-up of what everybody’s been up to.
Mr. Zheng has continued his aspirations to be more of a businessman and less of a barber, and opening Ding Chuang was a major step in this direction. He now splits his time between the two shops, acting as the manager for both. He still gives occasional haircuts to old customers, but is trying to focus more of his energy on management.
Adamum ended his tenure at The Red Sun shortly after I left China last summer. He went back to his hometown of Lianjiang for several months before returning to Fuzhou to open his own tiny barbershop located just around the corner from the Red Sun. In his shop, Adamum is the only master (barber) and there are only two little brothers. “This shop is pretty crappy, don’t you think? But at least it’s mine. I wasn’t getting too many customers at “The Red Sun.” I like being my own buss,” he told me. Adamum still hopes to one day achieve his lifelong dream of illegally immigrating to the United States.
Johnny left The Red Sun shortly after I did. Miraculously, the decision to leave was his own, not Mr. Zheng’s. Supposedly he returned to his hometown. Nobody has heard from him in months.
Jie Lun and Xiao Lei are the only two of the little brothers and sisters who are still at The Red Sun. Jie Lun is going to become a master next month, and Xiao Lei is still washing hair and giving massages.
Xiao Xia finished her tenure as a little sister shortly after I left The Red Sun. She is now working as a master at Ding Chuang.
Xiao Wang is still cutting hair for Mr. Zheng, but next week will be moving to Shanghai. His girlfriend, Xiao Xia’s sister, is already there and working. “I’m not sure what I’ll do when I’m there. Maybe cut hair, maybe something else, but it’s time to move on. I’ve been in Fuzhou for 7 years,” he told me.
After four years at The Red Sun, Jiang, who is the longest currently running employee, has also decided it is time to move on. His last day will be the fifteenth. He has been reading a lot of business books lately and is considering a possible career change. His son is now four years old and still being raised by Jiang’s parents in his hometown of Youxi. He still does not recognize Jiang as his father.
Cheng Qing is still at the Red Sun, and after Xiao Wang and Jiang leave, he will be the only master left who was there when I was employed. He, Xiao Xia, and Xiao Wang currently share a three bedroom unfinished apartment near The Red Sun “dormitory” which serves as an unofficial hangout for many of the employees after work hours are finished.
Guang Tou is no longer “guang tou” (bald). He has a full head of hair. When I ran into him unexpectedly in a kiosk on my way to Ding Chuang he shouted out my name and I didn’t even recognize him. He is now working as a master at Ding Chuang, and is engaged to Xiao Huang, who formerly worked the register at The Red Sun. She is now working as a cashier in a clothing store.
As planned, Mao Mao quit her job as a little sister at the Roman Barber Shop shortly after I returned to the United States. When Ding Chuang opened, she joined Xiao Xia and Guang Tou as the shop’s original three masters. She is still the only master who enjoys her line of work, and still hopes one day to become an internationally famous hair stylist.
Ling Ling is still working the cash register at The Red Sun. Just before I left China, she told me privately that she was going to quit, but I guess that plan never panned out.
Xiao Long returned to his hometown of Ningde several months ago where he has some family connections in the government. He is currently studying for the test to become a civil servant.
Nobody could tell me anything about Carrottop’s whereabouts. Mr. Zheng didn’t even remember him when I brought him up.
Xiao Fang finished his barber training and has now become a master at another barber shop in Fuzhou.
Chen Lin, who at 26 was by far the oldest little brother or sister in the shop, is also working at another barber shop in Fuzhou. I asked him if he had become a master yet. He laughed and said, “Nope, still washing hair.”
During my six days in Fuzhou, I spent the better part of most afternoons and evenings, chatting with my old buddies, performing colorful experiments on each other’s hair, and doing what we all do best, killing time in the barber shop. On my last night in town, we all went out to a local Fuzhou bar, to party the night away with Tsingtao’s and a Filipino cover band. Almost everybody came out, and even several of the employees who are no longer employed at The Red Sun showed up as well.
In addition to teaching me more than I ever imagined I would learn about life in China, my former co-workers have also become some of my closest personal friends. We still keep in regular contact via QQ, and whenever I am in China we exchange frequent text messages as they sit around the shop waiting for customers. The next time I return to Fuzhou, The Red Sun will hardly resemble the shop I worked in for 30 days back in May of 2007. The interior of the shop will look completely different, and likely only a handful of my former employees will still be working for Mr. Zheng. Yet I know my times at the Red Sun will never be forgotten as I look back at my years in the Middle Kingdom.
Below I’ve added some pics from the week back in Fuzhou. Enjoy.
*When I originally began blogging about my experiences in the barbershop, I kept the shop’s name (and those of my co-workers) private. Since then, my colleagues have all insisted to me that my concerns about protecting their privacy are far too American, and that I should go ahead and use real names. However, in order to prevent confusion, I have continued using pseudonyms for all of the employees.
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| me with Mr. Zheng |
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| Guang Tou, me, and Xiao Xia |
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| Jiang; waiting for customers |
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| Xiao Wang; striking the official Chinese snap shot pose in the front of the barbershop shop |
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| A trip back to the barbershop wouldn’t be complete without major modifications to my own hair style. Before I left Fuzhou, Xiao Wang gave me a spiky do and blond highlights. |
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| me with Ling Ling (right) and Wen Bing, Mr. Zheng’s brother who is now working as a master at the Red Sun |
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| Cheng Qing, Jiang, and Xiao Wang at the bar |
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| more from the bar; me with Xiao Fang (middle) and Cheng Lin, who met up with us for the night out |
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| Mao Mao and Xiao Xia |
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| Adamum and Xiao Xia |
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| the full group photo, after several rounds of Tsingtao and dice |
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| one final look at the Red Sun before it gets remodeled |
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| Mr. Zheng tells me it will look totally different next time I come back. |
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| After I left, Mr. Zheng hung this shot of me, him and the masters in the back of shop. Clockwise from the back left that’s Guang Tou, Mr. Zheng, Xiao Wang, Adamum, Cheng Qing, me, and Jiang |
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11.03.07
Posted in Barbershop, Culture Clash, Down in Chinatown, Personal Anecdotes at 5:56 am by Benjamin Ross
After spending the majority of the past two months in my hometown of Kansas City, I am now in Chicago beginning the next phase of my re-entry into American life. One of the reasons I chose Chicago was because of its ethnic diversity. As are most larger American cities, Chicago is full of ethnic enclaves scattered around this city. One of which is the Chicago Chinatown, home of the much of Chicago’s Chinese population as well as numerous restaurants, groceries, boutiques, and small businesses.
After my experience working in a Fuzhou barbershop last May, I thought it would be only fitting for my first experience in Chicago Chinatown to be a haircut. There are actually several barbershops in the Chinatown, but I chose one called “Urban Roots,” because it most closely resembled a “middle class” Chinese barbershop, like the one where I had worked in Fuzhou.
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| “Urban Roots,” one of Chinatown Chicago’s finer haircutting establishments |
With its bright colors on the wall and the mellow sounds Chinese pop music, the interior of Urban Roots looked and felt nearly identical to a Chinese barbershop (Chinese in the sense of actually being in China). The entire staff was Chinese, as were all of the other customers, and by the subtle look of surprise from the boy behind the counter, I am guessing they do not get too much non-Chinese clientele. Walking through the door, there was one blaring difference. Rather than being greeted by a chorus of “Huan Ying Guang Lin!” from the entire staff, a young boy behind the counter casually asked me, in accented English, “How can I help you?”
After telling the boy I wanted a haircut, I was led to the back of the salon by a woman in her mid-thirties. She sat me in a padded chair and leaned my head back into an attached sink, and began washing my pre-cut hairwash, just as they do in China. Conveniently located on the wall, at a perfectly aligned angle from where my head was tilted back, was an LCD screen playing Chinese karaoke videos. As I sat there, I felt for a moment as if I had been teleported back to Fuzhou.
The hair wash woman didn’t speak much English, so we chatted in Mandarin, and she told me she was from Guangzhou and had lived in Chicago for around 7 years. I told her how I had lived in Fuzhou for 3 years, and we exchanged stories and feelings about our years living in each others’ respective countries.
Throughout our exchange, one thing stood out as a blatant difference from China. That was that a woman in her mid-thirties was washing my hair. In China, working in a barbershop is a position considered to be low on the totem pole of social status. Furthermore, the job of a hair washer (or little brother/sister) is even lower than that of a barber. Most little brothers and sisters in Chinese barbershops are fresh out of high school, (or sometimes middle school) and rarely, if ever, older than their early twenties. Additionally, hair washing and cutting in China is a field still dominated by men, as many Chinese women stay at home to fulfill domestic responsibilities, especially those past child bearing years. Seeing a woman in her mid-thirties washing hair in China would probably be even less likely than seeing a 6 foot gringo from Chicago doing the same job. It would simply involve too much loss of face.
In China, face is a factor which can often determine which jobs are acceptable and which are not. Working as a businessman in a large company, a teacher in a university, or a government official comes with it a high degree of face. Work as a commissary employee, construction worker, or hair washer does not. This is why virtually none of the thousands of barbershop employees in Fuzhou are actually from Fuzhou. Rather, they come from small townships and rural areas in Fujian and surrounding provinces. A Fuzhou city native might consider working in a barbershop in say, Shanghai, but doing such work in their own hometown would cause too much loss of face. It would not even be an option.
When Chinese go abroad however, all of these rules are thrown out the window. Once in America, working in a barbershop, a restaurant, or a laundry service does not bare the embarrassment it would cause if such jobs were worked in China.
A close Chinese friend of mine, who comes from a wealthy family in Fuzhou, explained it to me like this, “If I went to Hong Kong, or England, or the United States, I could work a part time job such as one in a barbershop. But I could never do such work in Fuzhou. It would bring too much embarrassment to my family.”
One component of this is financial. Wages in Western countries are many times higher than those in Mainland China, and blue collar work in the West can lead to a life of comfort and luxury in China. Would an upper-middle class American with a college degree feel comfortable working as a cashier at McDonald’s? Would it be a job that he would want his friends to know he was working? Not likely. Now, imagine if McDonald’s restaurants in Canada were paying $250/hour, but Canada’s borders were closed, and only 5,000 Americans per year could emigrate to Canada to work. Suddenly the job, and the status which comes along with it, becomes more appealing.
After my hair wash, I was lead over to the barber chair to meet my new barber, a Chinese man, also in his mid-thirties. I greeted him in Mandarin, to which he replied, in English, “I don’t understand Mandarin, only Cantonese and English. I’m from Hong Kong.” Like the situation with the woman who had washed my hair, you would never see a Hong Kong native working in a Chinese barbershop in mainland China. Hong Kongers in mainland China find themselves propelled to the top of the social ladder, and certainly would not be cutting hair in the mainland. (I can’t comment on how this would play out in Hong Kong itself, since I haven’t spent enough time there). However, in the US, this job is perfectly acceptable by Chinese social norms.
After my haircut was complete, the woman from Guangzhou gave my head another wash, thus completing a process which was nearly identical to that which I had received so many times in China. The only major difference of course was the cost…a walloping 26 dollars, not including the 4 dollar tip I gave the barber. In Fuzhou, the cost of a haircut at my barbershop was 30 RMB (aprox $4), and as is custom in China, there is no tip.
My experience at Urban Roots not only gave me a sentimental throw-back to China, but it served to reaffirm a good lesson for all those coming from China to the United States. Here in Chicago I can have an authentic dim sum lunch, watch CCTV, and get a Chinese haircut complete with 2 washes and karaoke videos, but life in the US is not the same as it is in China, and this applies for both Chinese and laowai (which by the way, we are also referred to as by Chinese in the US). Long-standing beliefs and traditions, such as the concept of face, can last for millennia when maintained within their native countries. However, when exported to foreign lands, they are often no match for the social and economic forces of life abroad. And who knows?…Maybe someday doctors and lawyers from Chicago will emigrate to Fuzhou to cut hair.
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07.16.07
Posted in Barbershop, Business 'n Economics, Culture Clash at 9:50 am by Benjamin Ross
Allow me to reintroduce you to Mao Mao. She works at the Roman Barbershop and is from Fuqing, the small town, an hour outside Fuzhou where I spent my first year in a half in China. Like many Fuqingers, Mao Mao’s family emigrated (illegally I assume) to Japan when she was twelve. Her parents worked as cooks in Chinese restaurants, and she attended school with Japanese classmates. Mao Mao remained in Japan until she finished college, and then moved back to China.
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| Mao Mao dries and styles my hair after my first wash at the Roman Barbershop. |
Currently, Mao Mao works as a little sister, and makes around 800 RMB ($100 USD) per month. She has been in the hair industry for almost three years and this August will attend a month long training session, after which she will become a full-time barber.
Mao Mao was telling me about her career plan, when out of knee-jerk reaction I asked her, “Have you thought about looking for a white collar job, such as working in an import/export company? After all, you have a college education, and you speak fluent Japanese.”
Mao Mao was slightly taken back by my question, and replied, “While I was in Japan I decided I wanted to be a hairdresser. I want to work my way up the ranks and eventually be a hairdresser in an expensive salon. It’s my dream.”
I felt like an ass. Here was this young girl, on the verge of reaching her goal, and I was subconsciously attempting to talk her out of it, so that she could make a few more bucks by sitting in an office.
Upon analyzing the situation, I know exactly why I asked Mao Mao this question. Generally speaking, working in a barbershop is considered an undesirable job by Chinese standards. None of my former colleagues worked in a barbershop as a means to fulfill a dream. Rather, it was a logical choice after other factors, namely lack of further education, sealed off other career opportunities. Most of them would jump at a different opportunity if it were to present itself. Even Mr. Zheng confided to me that he would gladly never do another haircut again if a chance to do business or switch careers were to arise. However, the chances of this happening are slim. None of the workers in my barbershop have college educations, and only a handful finished high school. None one of them can speak a foreign language. By Chinese standards, Mao Mao is far over-qualified to be working as a hairdresser.
I apologized to Mao Mao for asserting she should contemplate a career change, and explained to her why I had brought it up.
She responded. “I think my ideals and those of the other barbershop workers are quite different. I work in a barbershop because I enjoy it, and want to make it my career. The others do it just as a means to make money. I think it’s more of a Chinese thing. Chinese people usually don’t care about chasing their dreams. They just do stuff for money. In Japan, things are different. People choose a career because it is what they want to do, not because it is the only option. I lived in Japan from the time I was 12 until I finished college. Most of my best friends are Japanese. So in many ways, I think more like a Japanese than a Chinese.”
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07.08.07
Posted in Barbershop, Business 'n Economics at 3:51 pm by Benjamin Ross
In July, Fuzhou is just about as hot as any place on earth. For my own sanity I have purposefully refrained from doing the Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions, but I am guessing the temperatures are regularly in the 100’s with humidity hovering somewhere between 95 and 98%. It’s the kind of weather where I walk outside and before I have even left my apartment complex, I have already broken a sweat. Yesterday, after a long bike ride in the heat, I decided to treat myself to a hair wash. For a change went to an upper tier （高等）barbershop, as opposed to my barbershop which is considered middle tier （中等）.
The upscale barbershop I chose has a Roman theme and is located on Jintai Lu, one of Fuzhou’s more upscale, shopping streets. One of the little sisters at the Roman shop, named Mao Mao, used to work at my barbershop and I had promised her that one day I would come in to her shop to get a hair wash.
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| The marble floors and wooden furniture give the Roman barbershop an air of luxury which was absent in my barbershop. |
From the first step into the Roman barbershop, the feeling is one of luxury and comfort. The walls the shop are decorated with Roman style columns. The mirrors and barber tables are all made of fine wood. The floor tiles are marble. There are hand-crafted wooden couches with fine upholstery and a wooden bookshelf with replicas of classic English novels. The walls are covered with fake but tasteful oil paintings. Even the bathroom is donned with wooden doors and fine metal work.
Along with the posch environment comes the expected price hike. A haircut in the Roman barbershop is 58 RMB and a hairwash is 24 RMB, compared with only 30 for a haircut and 12 for a wash in my shop.
After Mao Mao and I chatted for a few minutes, she took me to the washing area, which looked like a set of a Turkish bathhouse from a cheesy Hong Kong movie. As she washed my hair she asked me, “Do you think there is any difference between the hair wash here and the hair wash at the other shop?” Mao Mao asked me.
As Mao Mao massaged my head, I could feel that the shampoo was of higher quality than the cheap stuff used in middle tier barbershops, however the actual service she was providing me was of no difference than what was given in my shop.
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| The customer waiting area, with finely upholstered couches and coffee table. |
“Not really,” I replied. “It seems pretty much the same.”
“That’s because I learned how to wash hair at your shop. The service here is exactly the same, but it is more expensive because of the atmosphere.”
Mao Mao finished up my two rounds of shampoo, then my conditioner and neck massage, and as she had indicated, everything she did in the Roman barbershop was exactly the same as in my old shop.
While Mao Mao was drying my hair I told her my thoughts on the Roman barbershop.
“This shop is really nice, but I probably won’t come back here too often. It’s nice to see you, but as you said, I can get the same service at the other barbershop for half the price.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Mao Mao said. “Most of our customers don’t necessarily come here for the service.”
“Is it the atmosphere that they like?” I asked.
“The atmosphere is important, but more than anything, our customers like to come here because a lot of rich people get their hair washed here. This makes it more appealing,” she said.
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| Even the bathroom doors were decorated. |
This represents an interesting consumer pattern which I have noticed in other Chinese businesses as well. That is that wealthy Chinese people will pay high prices to know that they are patronizing a business which strictly caters to…other wealthy Chinese people.
It reminds me of a time I was at a bar in Fuzhou with a Chinese friend of mine who himself was a former bar owner. The bar had a pleasant ambiance, a good house band, and the beer was cheap, only 10 RMB per bottle. We were there on a Saturday night, and it was virtually empty.
“Why do you think business is so bad here?” I asked my friend.
“The beer is too cheap,” he replied. “Chinese people like expensive things. If the drinks are not expensive, the patrons will think it is not a good bar. They will not want to bring their friends there and risk losing face.”
In China, a product or service with a fancy package and an upped price tag will often generate more sales than an identical product sold at a discount price. As China’s nouveau riche demographic expands, so does the demand for high-end products and services. Whether these products and services are of higher quality than those at a lower price is questionable. However, for many what they are paying for is not necessarily better quality, but the image of better quality. As for me, I could do without the marble tiles and fancy upholstery. I’ll still be at the old barbershop, getting my hair washed for 12 RMB.
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06.30.07
Posted in Barbershop, Business 'n Economics, Fujian at 1:41 pm by Benjamin Ross
One summer when I was 10 years old, I heard a rumor at summer camp that there was a grocery store in my neighborhood which would pay cash for recycled aluminum cans. For the next 4 weeks, I collected all of the aluminum cans from fellow campers until I had nearly filled an entire garbage bag. At the end of the summer my dad took me to the grocery store. I proudly showed the clerk my bag full of cans which was nearly half my size. He told me I was a responsible little boy for caring so much about the environment, and then handed me $1.29 cash for my summer worth of can collecting.
5 years later, I started my first real job, working as a sacker in a local grocery store. I was paid $4.25 per hour, which was the minimum wage in Kansas at the time. It didn’t take me long to figure out that labor is worth more than materials in the USA.
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| A professional recycler hauls the days findings through the streets in Fuzhou. |
While I was working at the barber shop, three or four times per day, a middle aged man or woman would rummage through the trash can in front of the store. There was a man who would collect bottles and cans, a woman who would collect the plastic disposable cups we used to serve the customers water, and there was even a lady who would come every few days to collect all of the hair. By the end of the day, there was hardly anything left in the trash.
To a casual observer, these people might seem to be beggers. Fuzhou does have its share of panhandlers, but these are not the same people who are digging through the trash Rather, the people who collect our disgarded items are professional recyclers.
In Fuzhou, recyclers can collect .07 RMB for an aluminum can and .1 RMB for plastic bottles. At this rate, it would take about 109 aluminum cans to equal 1 US dollar. This rate is not too far off the one I was given that summer I collected cans at camp. The return is still not high, but when you consider a low-level service industry job requires 4 hours of work to earn 1 US dollar, the prospects of making a living off of recycling suddenly become more attractive. Add that China’s densely populated cities make the process of bottle collecting more efficient than they would be in the US, and it is not surprising why professional recycling is such a common profession in China.
In addition to recycling cans and bottles, professional recyclers also collect and/or buy used electronic devices, books, magazines, cardboard, CDs, and virtually anything else which at some time had value. Some of it is resold, and some is broken down for scrap. The recyclers ride their bikes through city streets with big signs placed in front of the handle bars which read 高价回收 (high price recyclying) and contain a list of items (usually household electrical appliances) which they will buy.
The future will only tell how much longer recycling will remain a profession in mainland China, and presumably as the price of labor rises, the draw to professional recycling will recede. But as barbershop workers are still making only 24 cents an hour, recycling stands to remain a viable profession for the near foreseeable future at least.
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06.21.07
Posted in Barbershop, Business 'n Economics at 11:43 am by Benjamin Ross
Last week I went with my friend Mary to get her hair cut and help her translate. The barber shop she wanted to go to was a new one located just a block away from Mr. Zheng’s barber shop where I had worked for a month. From my first step inside I could tell that this new barber shop was far ahead of ours in terms of ambiance. The walls were decorated in a modern black, red, and white motif, and there were live plants placed around the shop’s perimeter, adding to the modern look and feel. The hair wash beds and barber chairs were of higher quality than those in our shop and appropriately matched the walls and decorations. But what stuck out more than anything was a row of brand new computers with LCD monitors set off to the side of the store. Sitting in front of the computers were customers gleefully enjoying a game of counterstrike or chatting on QQ as they had their hair washed.
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| Mary enjoys a pre-cut massage as she checks her e-mail. |
For me, this is the perfect answer for a problem I have long had with Chinese haircuts and hair washes…they take too damn long. Put me in front of a computer with Internet, and suddenly sitting in a barber shop for an hour becomes a lot more appealing.
But what was the most striking of all was the price. A hair wash was 15 RMB, (as opposed to 12 RMB at my shop), but the price of a hair cut was exactly the same, 30 RMB. Had I been a regular customer, and not had any allegiance to my former employer, it is likely I would never go back to Mr. Zheng’s shop again. The new shop was clearly a better atmosphere, and with the added bonus of computers there would be no turning back.
This should spark some concern for Mr. Zheng as his shop is already competing with four other barber shops on the block. As China transitions to a market economy, competition has been rapidly transforming the way Chinese businesses operate. In some sectors, this change has been slow, but in the hairstyling industry, the competition has been vicious, with the result being high standards of service and tight margins for improvement.
I remember one conversation I had with Cheng Qing in which he told me, “There are three factors which will determine the success of a barber shop. First is the ability and technique of the barber, this is 30%. Then there is the service: How friendly are the little brothers and sisters? Is the barber pleasant to be around? etc. This is another 30%. Finally there is the environment in the store. This is accounts for 40%.” If Cheng Qing’s words are accurate, then Mr. Zheng will have a difficult time competing with this new store, regardless of how talented his barbers are.
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| Young customers battle through levels of Counterstrike as their scalps are massaged by little brothers. |
Unlike many other sectors of the Chinese service industry, most hair salons (in Fuzhou at least) provide excellent service. In my time working in the barber shop, I never once saw an employee take any action towards a customer which I would consider rude by either Western or Chinese standards. This is absolutely not the case with Chinese hotels and especially restaurants where staff are often negligent at best.
When Mr. Zheng asked me to give a speech about service standards in American barbershops and how our shop could improve based on the American model, I was at a loss for content. If I had been working in a restaurant, I could have easily spoken for hours: come back to tables to check on customers, don’t hustle customers when they are ordering food, memorize the contents of every dish on the menu, smile once or twice a day, et cetera. While this may not be the case in cheaper barber shops, I can honestly say that the service in our shop (which is considered mid-level) is equal if not better than what you would get in the United States.
With competition having already driven up service standards, and the negligible difference in barber’s abilities (I still do not even believe the 30 RMB barbers are any better than the 10 RMB barbers) the only option left is to innovate. Without any innovation of their own such as in-store computers, I see a bleak future for shops like Mr. Zheng’s.
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06.15.07
Posted in Barbershop at 9:14 pm by Benjamin Ross
Xiao Jing is a little brother in my barber shop. He is 20 years old, and has been working in the shop for almost 2 years. According to Mr. Zheng, he is one of the customers’ favorite little brothers. He has excellent hair washing and massage technique, and customers enjoy his personality. But when Xiao Jing is not busy with customers, he is busy with his Sony Ericson cell phone. I often see Xiao Jing bouncing around the shop taking pictures and videos of other employees with the 2 mega pixel camera on his phone. When he’s not taking pictures, he’s playing games or sending text messages. Xiao Jing bought his phone last year and it cost him 1800 RMB (approx $220 USD). This may not seem too expensive at first, but when you consider his monthly salary fluctuates between 800-1000 RMB, this means that he had to spend an entire 2 months salary, just to buy the cell phone (not including talk time). That’s 1/6 of his annual income!
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| Johnny and Xiao Fang watch on as Adamum battles to the next level of Jet Wars. |
Xiao Jing is not atypical. Every single employee in the shop owns a cell phone, except for Johnny who accidentally ran his through the washing machine. Most of their phones cost about the same as Xiao Jing’s. My phone, which cost me 800 RMB, is by far the cheapest of any of the employees.
The fact that non-wealthy Chinese people will spend so much money on a cell phone used to strike me as odd. Sure, there is a status element to it, but working class Chinese people have always struck me as too practical to buy an expensive gadget just to show it off.
As I mentioned before, my phone cost me 800 RMB. It is a Chinese brand, and comes with most of the same features you would get in an expensive foreign model. When I bought it, I bought it for two reasons: Make phone calls and send text messages. I wanted to buy the simplest and thinnest phone I could find, and it just so happened that it had a whole slew of features I never planned to use.
However, in this past month I have customized my ring tones, mastered the puzzle game, sent over one thousand text messages, reorganized my phone book, taken pictures of all my coworkers, associated those pictures with their profiles on my phone, and loaded my phone’s SIM card with a collection of new Chinese songs recommended by my coworkers to listen to on the phone’s MP3 player. Working in the barber shop, I probably spent more time in front of my cell phone per day than my computer.
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| Cheng Qing and Xiao Xie also pass their idle work time on their handheld entertainment centers. |
What I have learned from a month in a Chinese barber shop is that a cell phone takes on whole new set of functionality when you work a job which requires you to sit around on your ass for 3 to 5 hours per day. When you look at this as 90 to 150 hours per month of downtime, suddenly spending 1800 RMB on a cell phone starts to make a lot more sense.
With China’s massive labor pool, many of whom work jobs with considerable down time, it is no wonder that the world’s cell phone manufacturers have gone to such great lengths to target the Chinese market. Buying a cell phone in China is almost like buying a car in the US. There are literally thousands of models to choose from coming from a multitude of brand names, and even some illegally made phones with no brand at all. In addition to functionality Chinese consumers also judge a phone based on its aesthetic values.
During my third week at the barber shop, Xiao Xia purchased a new Nokia phone for around 2000 RMB. While the phone came equipped with numerous state of the art features, the first comments out of other employees’ mouths were “啊很漂亮” or “oh, it’s so beautiful.” Most of the employees at the barber shop have very few possessions. Many of them have only 3 or 4 sets of clothes, and their phone provides them with a unique chance at self-expression of personal tastes. Calling a cell phone beautiful sounds odd to Western ears where most of our adjectives relating to our handheld devices deal with functionality and form factor. Yet in China, a cell phone is not just a cell phone. It is entertainment for 3 hours a day. It is a fashion accessory, and an expression of one’s own tastes. Sound similar to how we buy cars in the West? That’s because it is. In 3 years in China, I have never owned a cell phone which cost more than 800 RMB. However the longer I worked at the barber shop, the more I found myself itching to pick up the latest Nokia 3000 RMB pocket dragon. Now if you don’t mind…I have puzzles to get back to.
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06.11.07
Posted in Barbershop, Health and Medicine at 4:45 pm by Benjamin Ross
On my second to last night in the barbershop, I was giving a massage to one of our regular customers who is a good friend of Mr. Zheng. She asked me to pull down her shirt a bit in back, and have a look. There was a long red scar going down her back. “It’s from gua sha. Have you ever had one?” she said.
Gua sha (刮痧) is a Chinese medical treatment in which a smooth edge is rubbed up and down the back after applying a lubricant. The result is a red bruise which makes the recipient look like a torture victim. Last week I had seen Xiao Wang perform an amateur gua sha on Adamum in the store, and insisted I would never get one no matter how good it felt.
“No, I’ve never tried gua sha. How was it?” I replied to the woman.
“It’s great. You really should try it sometime. What about ba guan?” she asked.
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| Xiao Wang gives an in-store gua sha to Adamum |
Ba guan (拔罐) also known as “fire cupping,” is another Chinese medical treatment in which a vacuum is created by fire in glass cups which are placed on the patients back. The resulting suction is believed to cleanse toxins, and also provide treatment to diseases such as pneumonia and the common cold. If you have ever seen people in China with large circular purple bruises on their back, this is what it is from.
“I haven’t tried that either.”
“Wanna try?” she asked. By this time Mr. Zheng was listening in on our conversation. “How about I take both of you out to the sauna after work and you can try it out,” she continued.
Now up until this point, I had been steering away from any activity or benefits which might separate me from the other employees, but I must admit I was also quite interested to try out ba guan for myself.
“Sure, why not. Let’s do it,” I told her. By this time, several of my coworkers had been listening in, and began questioning if me if I really thought I could go through with it. Chinese medicine has a reputation for pain and bad tastes, and foreigners (probably rightly so) are often perceived as not being able to take it. Putting on an arrogant air of machoness, I told them I could take the pain and would come back the next day with the scars to prove it.
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| The plate of glass cups which will momentarily be heated and placed on my back. |
The woman drove Mr. Zheng and I to a sauna near the barber shop. Like any Chinese sauna, the men and women have to separate and you go into a locker room where you are followed by a little Chinese guy wearing a tuxedo top who stands next to you as you strip down naked. After you take a shower he hands you the sauna clothes, a loose-fitting pajama-like garment which comes in a top and a bottom.
After we took a shower and put on our sauna clothes, Mr. Zheng and I were led into a massage room. Mr. Zheng had opted out of the ba guan, and instead ordered a massage. A few minutes later, a young girl came in and began massaging Mr. Zheng’s back. I must add that the thought of having a massage is ten times more appealing after you have spent the day massaging other people. But I had chosen my destiny, and it was too late to back out now. Just then, my server walked in the door. But instead of a cute little massage girl, it was a young guy with a full plate of glass cups and metal tongs. Let’s call him Frank out of convenience.
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| Frank gets everything prepared…Do they use these kinds of tools in Western medicine? |
“Just tell me if it’s uncomfortable,” he said which is Chinese for “This is going to hurt like hell.”
Mr. Zheng confirmed with me once more that I really wanted to go through with the process, and fearing the embarrassment of having come this far only to return to the barber shop the following day without a back looking like a detainee at a torture camp, I decided to proceed.
The massage bed had a hole for the head, so I lay face down, with my head in the hole, and could not see anything which was going on. First Frank applied an ointment or lubricant to my back. After this, I began to feel the suction of one of the cups on my back. The suction is created by a flame which is ignited inside the cups before they are applied, so when the cup was applied to my back it was still hot, but not hot enough to be uncomfortable. I could feel the flesh being sucked up in the cup, when all of a sudden…”pop.” He pulled it up. The process was then repeated over and over again. A hot cup was placed on different spots on my back, and then removed a few seconds later, providing a rhythm of “pop’s” up and down my backside. After about five minutes of this, I began to feel a hot scraping on my back. It felt as if somebody was running a smooth stone down my back and scraping off the skin, although not quite that painful. At this point, I did have to chicken out and ask Frank to stop. I still have no idea what he was actually doing, as the whole time my face was stuck face down in the head hole in the bed. As Frank moved on to the final stage, I could hear the hot flame igniting the cups as one by one he placed each of the hot cups in different points along my back. After ten minutes, my entire back was covered in hot cups, all simultaneously sucking upwards on my back skin. It was a little awkward, slightly painful, but one of the more relaxing sensations I have ever experienced. Generally speaking, I do not take pain too well, and I am not a masochist, but the pain on my back actually felt good. I lay face down on the bed, with my back being sucked up by the hot cups for ten minutes before Frank came back to remove them pop by pop.
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My back is completely covered in glass cups.
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“Don’t take a shower for the next 12 hours, and if it itches, it is best not to scratch it,” he told me as he removed the cups. After we were finished, Mr. Zheng and I went back to the locker room, where the first thing I did was look at my back in the mirror. I had done the ba guan, my body felt great, and I had the large circular red scars on my back to prove it to my coworkers. From what I had heard they would be turning purple within the next day or two.
The cost of the service was 40 RMB, though I have heard it is cheaper if done at a more rustic venue. Although my understanding of ba guan and Chinese medicine as a whole is quite limited, I would recommend ba guan to anybody who is interested in trying something new. (And if anybody out there is more familiar with Chinese medicine, and can elaborate on ba guan’s effects that would be great). Although the effects were nothing extraordinary, my back felt great afterwards, and it was not nearly as painful as it looks from the pictures.
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| After the cups are removed, I am left with these lovely bruises. This shot could really freak out a mother if not placed into context, eh? |
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06.10.07
Posted in Barbershop, Fujian, Society at 9:38 am by Benjamin Ross
There were several interesting comments relating to continued education on my last post. I began responding to them in comment form, but when the comment began taking up an entire page, I decided this topic was worthy of a new post.
Ty from Ireland sums things up by saying:
It is incorrect to say that college entrance exam is the only way to receive higher education in China. There is a system called GaoZiKao, higher education through self learning. You could, if you work hard enough and possess the capability, get a degree after passing a number of exams on different subjects. The system has been there for years. Having said that, it is very hard for someone to finish a degree in that way because you have to work in the meantime to make a living.
I have known several Chinese people who have completed such programs, especially the zi kao. What I have noticed (and again I am making a generalization on 1.3 billion people based on my own observations) is that typically the people who enroll in these kinds of programs are urban residents. Here in Fuzhou, almost all kids get into high school, and generally speaking, they are expected to get into college as well. Not being accepted into college will often define a city resident as an underachiever. This is quite different in rural areas, where being accepted to college is comparatively less common and still quite an accomplishment. When I was teaching in Fuqing, most of my students were from rural areas, and were the first person in their family ever to receive education past high school.
Most of my coworkers in the barbershop come from the same backgrounds as my students in Fuqing, except the did not study hard enough to get into college. In fact, with the exception of only two or three little brothers, most of them did not even get accepted into high school either, thus ending their formal educations at the age of 16.
If a student from Fuzhou does not get into college, it can be a little bit of an embarrassment for the family, not to mention a limit on future opportunities. Because of this, parents will often insist that their child take time off to complete programs such as zi kao or night classes, to further their education.
With rural residents it is not so easy. For starters, there is the economic factor. Most rural families are not nearly as wealthy as those from cities, and need their children to immediately begin working as soon as they have reached the terminal point in their education. If their children test well enough to get into college, they will often borrow money from family members in order to pay for their child’s tuition. In a family which is predominantly uneducated, having a child who can enter college, is like an investment, which if it pays off, will benefit the entire family. However, if the child does not get accepted into college (or an equivalent vocational program i.e. 大专) they usually set off for work, like the little brothers and sisters in the barber shop. Once they begin working, continued education often becomes impractical.
In the case of the barber shop, the little brothers and sisters each put in over 70 hour work weeks. As Ty mentions, it would be virtually impossible for them to enroll in any kind of continuing education program, and expect to have enough time to study enough to do reasonably well. This not even mentioning obtaining the money to pay for the training.
I have pondered how much studying could be accomplished during the excessive down time we have in the barber shop. While you might not be able to attain any certifications, there still is certainly an enormous amount of room for personal improvement. After only a few weeks of informal exchanges, Adamum is now able to correctly pronounce a decent collection of English greetings and swears, and I can now do the same in the Fuzhou dialect. It wouldn’t be too far off to posit that if I were to work in the shop for a full year, Adamum would be speaking fluent English, and I would be doing most of my communication in Fuzhou hua. I brought up this topic of studying to Chen Lin (a little brother) once and he responded with a sarcastic smile “Study? The reason we all work here is because we hate studying and we aren’t good at it. If I was good at studying I would have finished high school.” So there you go.
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