I asked Mr. Zheng about the computers and he sort of gave an angry shrug and blew off my question. In other words, I would imagine adding computers probably isn’t in his budget, and he senses that he may have a real problem competing with these new guys. As for price, I would disagree about it being a factor. Virtually all barbershops in Fuzhou have the same prices. Mid-range salons like ours in the downtown are 30 RMB for a haircut. If you go outside the second ring road, most are 10 RMB. The fancy, upscale places are 50. There generally isn’t too much tinkering with the prices. I think there are unwritten rules where all the owners know if they start lowering their prices, the other stores will just lower them as well. Ultimately this kind of price war will hurt all of the store owners, so they all seem to shy away from it. I see this kind of mentality in most businesses in Fuzhou, not just hair salons.

As Warren Buffett would quip: I would rather buy a good business with mediocre management than a bad business with great management.

Ted spent a year teaching with me at the university in Fuqing and taught me how to play tennis. We were the only 2 Westerners in town, except for a delegation of engineers from Pittsburgh who only left their hotel to go to McDonald’s. Quite random you guys ran into each other out in Xinjiang.

I haven’t seen the computers. Y’all in Fuzhou are ahead of us in Shanghai.*

*In barbershop technology.

Love your blog. My family is first generation Chinese American and we moved from Fuzhou, so I do thoroughly enjoy reading about your adventures there. I was sharing this little tidbit regarding the computers in bathrooms with my father and his response was, “Oh yeah, some places in China, they even have Internet access in the bathrooms now.”