05.26.07

Sanitation with Chinese Characteristics

Posted in Barbershop, Health and Medicine at 11:10 am by Benjamin Ross

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China often gets a reputation for not having exceptionally high standards in terms of cleanliness and sanitation. After living in China for three years, I have to say that I agree with this assertion. While in some areas, such as food, sanitation may not be as necessary in China as it is in the West, this does not quell the fact that most Chinese public establishments are considerably less sanitary than the American equivalent.

With this in mind, I wanted to write a little expose, if you will, on sanitation in Chinese barber shops, or more accurately, my Chinese barber shop.

For starters, I should mention our shop is what is referred to as “mid-range.” We refer to it as a 美发店 (mei3 fa4 dian4) rather than a 理发店 (li3 fa4 dian4) and our barbers are called 美发师 (mei3 fa4 shi1) instead of 理发师 (li3 fa4 shi1). This is analogous to the euphemistic differences between “barbers” in a “barber shop” and “hair dressers” in a “salon.” This means that most of our clientele are rich, but not so rich that they need to have the same hairdresser who once gave Jackie Chan a foot massage. A hair wash is 12 RMB, and a haircut is 30 RMB (50 if Mr. Zheng does it himself). Customers expect levels of sanitation higher than what you would you would get in a 10 RMB barbershop…or from those barber shops with the red lights that don’t actually cut any hair.

Carrottop (now with purple hair) scrubs the floor during out late night cleaning routine.

I must say that of the various service industry jobs I have worked (all in the US), the barber shop is probably the cleanest environment I have ever worked in. Every evening from 10 to 10:30, Mr. Zheng has us 做卫生 (zuo4 wei4 sheng1), the Chinese word for “clean up” which literally means “do sanitation.” All of us little brothers and sisters have to meticulously clean every nook and cranny of the shop even though it is just going to get covered with hair again the following morning. We sweep the floor, scrub all the sinks with detergent, tidy up the bathroom, and clean all mirrors, windows, and machinery. The whole cleaning routine goes a bit overkill, but since there are no hourly wages, Mr. Zheng has little incentive not to make use of the excess labor that he has on hand. He is particular about all the cleaning, and inspects everything before we leave. One evening he determined that the floor hadn’t been properly cleaned, and made us stay late to do it all over again. Because of the wage structure, this does not cost him any extra money in overtime, as it would in the US.

“Every nook and cranny” includes the area under the AC, which is usually full of hair.

All this being said, there are still a few token areas of concern when it comes to cleanliness and sanitation. The first is the towels. When a customer comes in for a wash, a towel is placed on their back before they lie down on the washing bed to protect their clothes from any misguided water. Another towel is used to wrap their hair after the wash is complete. After they finish their post-wash massage they are guided over to one of the barbers, who blow dries and styles their hair. Before this happens the towel used to wrap the hair during the massage is discarded onto a nearby chair. Part of my job is to collect the discarded towels. If they are thoroughly wet I throw them in a tub and they go home to Mr. Zheng’s washing machine. If they are dry or only somewhat wet, I put them on top of the wet face towel heater to dry them off. They are then thrown into a bucket, refolded and used again. So in theory, the towel that is being used to dry off your hair could have already been used on three or four different heads that day, granted they were all freshly washed heads.

The next area of concern is of sterilizer for the hair cutting utensils, which is…never used. This may sound gross to us mysophobic Westerners, but I’m not convinced how absolutely necessary it really is. When I get a haircut in the US, my barber always meticulously sterilizes all of the utensils before they touch my head. However, he also does not wash my hair first. It’s feasible a customer could have weeks of oil, dirt, and germs built up in their hair which then comes into contact with the utensils. In our shop every customer is given a thorough hair wash (2 rounds of shampoo, plus a shot of conditioner) before and after every haircut. While this probably does not kill as many germs as the sanitizer, I’m willing to accept it as clean enough and leave the rest to my immune system.

Other than these 2 areas, I have yet to notice anything else which may be of concern from a sanitation perspective. The floor and barber chairs are always spotless, the sinks are as clean as they could be for receiving as much use as they do, and the bathroom is always spotless. Now, if only I could say the same for Chinese restaurants.

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