07.16.07
When I grow up I (don’t) want to be a barber…
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.”
martin
said,
July 16, 2007 at 10:21 am
she’s cute
Woaizhongguo
said,
July 16, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Isn’t it nice to meet someone who has chosen their career without making the shrewd calculation about how much money they will make from it first but instead follows their heart. She may not end up being wealthy, but she’ll be happier and therefore richer than those greedy landlords that drive around in BMW X5s and never stop talking about how much money they are making on properties.
Oh and yes, she is cute
BTW I have just changed my theme so my blog no longer looks like yours!
coljac
said,
July 16, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Well, there’s more to a career than money. Working as a hairdresser is no doubt very hard work. And even if it paid big bucks, would an intelligent person with broadened international horizons always find the job stimulating and fulfilling? It’s hard to think so. The work is repetitive, little initiative is needed, and there is limited opportunity to advance, learn new skills or otherwise realize one’s potential. Rather than money, I suspect these are the reasons behind your question. She may be pursuing a dream, but one might wonder whether the realization of that dream will be all she hopes for.
羲
said,
July 16, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I think the dream is more important, but the realistic life is so cruel !
Alan
said,
July 17, 2007 at 12:12 am
An interesting post this is. At first I felt like Ben and thought maybe Mao Mao should have pursued a better paying career. Then something dawned on me – one of my good friends in America was a hairdresser. She has retired now in her mid 50’s. She and her husband are now living a very comfortable retirement life (obviously quite wealthy with a nice retirement home in the mountains as well as owning several rental properties). She owned her own hair salon and worked very hard for probably 20 or 25 years. She was quite business savvy. As a hair salon owner, you could rent out chairs (i.e. hair cutting stations) to other hair dressers and that was exactly what she did. It’s my understanding that my friend was able to pay bulk of her monthly rent on her hair salon with the rent money she got from renting out some of the chairs. A genius business practice that is! I have learned not to judge a person’s wealth odometer by his or her profession. A business owner of any profession has the potential to make a lot of money. The top 1% in any profession makes about 10 times more than the average income of that profession.
joyce
said,
July 17, 2007 at 12:21 am
an interesting girl~
people who equiped with dream and brave to pursue it are respectable.they know the meaning of the life.
she is one of the few~i think she can become a great barber one of these days!
Johan
said,
July 17, 2007 at 3:19 am
I’ve seen hair salon owner making tons of money, that would be the best of both worlds, enjoy what you are doing and make big bucks!
G. T. Lin
said,
July 17, 2007 at 4:56 pm
The real question is, why didn’t she attempt to pursue her dream in Japan?
Jet So
said,
July 17, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Tough to make it in Japan as a “gaijin” … especially if you’re not a passport-carrying citizen (that is a legal resident, paying taxes continously for over 3 years, & of course a name change …).
Good Luck to your friend though.
G. T. Lin
said,
July 18, 2007 at 10:54 am
She has been in Japan since she was 12 years old, family is in Japan, speaks fluent Japanese ; I don’t think the other factors, i.e. her being a gaijin, has that much significance. I know some people who is attending college in Japan and working part time there. I am really interested in what her real reasons are to leave her family in Japan and come to China for a hairdressing career. In my personal opinion Japan has the more delevoped hair dressing industry, why not learn the techniques and skills there and later on, use it in China? I am sure she would have better prospects if she tell the salon owner she is a certified hair dresser in Japan, rather than learning and starting from the bottom in China.
Benjamin Ross
said,
July 18, 2007 at 11:21 am
I didn’t mention this in the article, but since it came up, the reason Mao Mao left Japan was because of visa problems. I did not want to go into specifics with her (this can be a sensitive issue with Fuqing people who often use questionable means to go to Japan) but she told me that after she graduated college she couldn’t stay in Japan any longer, so she came back to China to be a hairdresser here.
Handan
said,
July 18, 2007 at 6:07 pm
coljac:
Hairdressing is by no means repetitive work. It’s creative and it’s much more than just skills. I understand/suspect that the poor state of the hairdressing quality in China has misled your perception.
Benjamin Ross
said,
July 18, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I would agree with Coljac on this one. Although, I have never done it myself, I would think being a barber would be more interesting and involve more creativity than a lot of other jobs, especially in China. However, of the 6 barbers at the barbershop (including Mr. Zheng), all but one expressed to me that they thought their jobs were “boring” and “pointless.” Only one of the barbers, Jiang (the guy who’s son doesn’t recognize him) ever gave me the impression that he enjoys cutting hair. For Jiang, he gets satisfaction from designing new hairstyles for customers, and ultimately wants to focus his career on hairstyle “consulting.” However, he is the exception not the rule.
To me here is what is fascinating. In the US (and apparently in Japan) becoming a hairdresser is not considered a bad job, and I think this is mainly because (as coljac says) it requires both skills and creativity. If you adjust for cost of living, I think the income levels are quite comparable. However, in the US and Japan (I am guessing) there are also many more jobs which allow for more creativity and less repetition than cutting hair. In China, the percentage of people who work “interesting” jobs is far less than it is in the US (I wish I had statistics to support this, but anybody who has lived in both countries could back me up on this point). In other words, Chinese jobs on average are much more boring than American ones. One would think a job such as cutting hair, would be more sought after in China than it is in the US, but based on my experiences, this is clearly not the case.
zuraffo
said,
July 19, 2007 at 1:11 am
Erm, you do know that there are always some celebrity hairdressers around celebrities, right? I am sure they earn a lot of money.
A certain famous hairdresser here in Singapore charges a few hundreds SGD for a haircut. Of course, most of his clients are rich TaiTais and celebrities but hey, he is sort of a celebrity by his own right.
Handan
said,
July 19, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Ben, I don’t think you took a close look at coljac’s comment.
Or you took my comment as coljac’s? in which I case I needn’t be putting up the following elaboration.
I agree that the hairdressing business is not as fascinating as it could be. You don’t see much creativity in this job in China. ( because too many are not treating it as a career but merely a way of making subsistance living?)
That said, you don’t have to be a bored and boring hairdresser just because you work in China. The art of hairdressing is a worthy dream, as opposed to Coljac’s claim.
Wen
said,
July 22, 2007 at 1:26 am
Interesting article! I imagine most of you would be writing from China so what i’m about to say is probably no news to you guys but i’ll give my cents worth anyway.
From my observation, most Chinese people especially those living in a small city like Fuzhou where genuinely good job opportunities are so few, their greatest life’s ambition is to buckle down to a secure job no matter how menial and repetitive. Great examples include when highly qualified engineering grads enter into clerical roles in government departments where starting pay + allowances（工资+奖金）generally go higher than RMB2000/month but like most things in supposedly egalitarian China, you’ll need connections to get into a cushy government job. At the risk of sounding like a ‘know-it-all’, this side of Chinese society may be more difficult to observe for foreigners living in China.
While I agree that hairdressing is a fantastic career option in the Westernised World promising pretty decent money, low barrier for entry, and if you’re good, a whole lot more money and glamour than any law school graduate paper-pusher would ever enjoy, the reality of hairdressing remains pretty gloom in China. In fact, I believe most private-sector jobs in Fuzhou are pretty horrible due to an oversupply of college graduates and an even greater glut of lowly-skilled migrant workers from the country in a country where labour laws are still pretty much non-existent. I certainly hope that Mao Mao fulfills her dream but it would be so difficult in a city where citizens are highly price-sensitive especially when it comes to manual labouring services. Please bear in mind that disposable income is pretty high in the West so people place lower value on physical goods and are generally happier to pay for personalised services. This is in contrast with China where the average un-married person still lives in cramped apartments with parents and could quite easily spend 50% of net income on food.
What I’m trying to say is it is an extremely rare but courageous thing for a Chinese person to sacrifice better pay in pursuit of their dreams. I mean even in the West where living standards measured by the amount of material goods we could afford is almost too high, there are still a lot of people who forego their intuitive interests in pursuit of more money/status. It is hence not surprising that in China where the average person’s desire for material goods are no where near saturation point they would choose a CK spray over dream:-p
zben
said,
August 12, 2007 at 11:34 am
hehe,Good Place!