Reverting back to the chronicling of my goings on mode. I was pooped on by a bird today. Is that supposed to be lucky or unlucky? I can’t remember. What I do know is that birds are few and far between in the cities of smog-choked China. 怎么办? Zenme ban? What to make of that…
I also hit full-time-graduate-student-with-a-part-time-internship in full swing this week. Manageable so far but I foresee stressful times ahead on weeks I’ll have assignments due. The good news is it seems like I’m going to get a lot of writing in with the magazine. Lots of stuff I can publish, I think. In fact, in support of City Weekend’s Home & Office quarterly magazine supplement, I was able to write some blurbs in text boxes. You know, those shaded areas that distract you from the way better writing within the bulk of more important articles. In other words, something I wrote will be printed into a magazine. Making progress!
But I’ve also been sort of commissioned for a far more interesting project that should afford me a lot more leeway in the creative writing process. And the chance to write some full length articles. I’m working on a neighborhood spotlight, another magazine supplement, but a one time shot, a sit-on-the-shelf-for-a-while type project, about Shanghai’s Gubei and Hongqiao districts in the west of the city, also known as Koreatown and Little Japan. In support of this, I decided to make myself the self proclaimed expert on all things that this up and coming neighborhood has to offer. I made my way down from the isolation of Shanghai’s northern Yangpu district, where I live and where Fudan is located, down line 10, and one hour of staring at the Chinese commuters sitting across the train from me later, popped out to Yilin Road, way in the west and got to do some serious exploring. The neighborhood is an old one and now being revamped to accommodate an increasingly interested expatriate crowd. East Asian expats, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, etc. have been settling in this pleasant residential area for over 100 years and Western expats are taking notice. The area is very green, relatively quiet, and lots of small points of interest worth taking notice. So it should be fun to do some exploring of my own and write about my findings. I’ll try and save a lot of this experience for my the magazine (I’ll share later, I promise).
In other news, I got my first haircut in the combined total of 1.5 years of being in China today. I should also mention that I hate getting haircuts. Just generally. In all the times I’ve walked into a barber shop and told and then re-emphasized what I wanted done to my head, words that I believe were clear and explicit always seem to fall on deaf ears. Barbers don’t listen to what you say and the times that they ask you what you want, which is not every time, is seemingly a simple formality. And because they usually don’t listen to exactly what I say, I usually hate my haircut. I get a bit sad and mopey for a day or two, and then sit patiently as my hair grows back. That’s just the way it is.
In the past, in China, rather than bothering to get my haircut at all, I would just let it grow. It gets wild and curly and ridiculous. Moppish, I believe is an accurate term. I kind of like it when it does that. But it’s not super professional especially now when I’m a mature graduate student and also have a job and I’m getting older and all that. Fair enough. Time to man up and get a haircut.
I have a Mandarin phrasebook that I got when I was a student in Beijing years ago. It’s useful for finding the more colloquial ways of saying things. Of saying things that make more sense to the average “street” person, as I’ll call them. Textbooks often fill your head with obnoxiously formal grammar patterns and not so useful ways of saying things. Things that when said to a native speaker, says, ah okay, you’re studying Chinese. And when said to a non-native speaker, says, ah okay, you’ve studied the same book as me. My phrasebook has a chapter on health and beauty and a specific section on getting haircuts. Key words: 剪发, jianfa, haircut, 短一点, duan yidian, a little shorter, 上面你不用剪, shangmian ni buyong jian, you don’t need to cut the top, 我喜欢这个头发很长, wo xihuan zhege toufa hen chang, I like this part long, 后面, houmian, the back, 侧面, cemain, the sides. I practiced. A lot.
There’s a barber shop, well okay, beauty salon, across the road from the gate in my corner of the university’s campus. I heard the haircuts here were 20 kuai, about 3 dollars, pretty good deal. I popped in through the door, met the male receptionist who said to me, 要剪发吗? Yao jianfa ma? Here for a haircut? Okay, good sign, I recognized the exchange. I nodded curtly and he looked around to the many male hairdressers lazing about the waiting chairs, legs crossed, staring into their smart phones. He pointed to the one that looked like a Pokemon character, long spiked hair, streaks of red, buzzed on the sides, tight black leather jacket and pants, who looked up from his phone and led me to a vacant chair. I sat down, staring at myself in the mirror in front of me, composing myself. I initiated the dialogue. Things were going well. I told him I wanted to tidy up the sides a bit and that he needn’t cut the top, I’m letting that grow. He understood, we were on the same page. But he looked at me for a moment in the mirror, pausing a bit, and then this is what I heard: “Chinese, chinese, chinese, here…I think, chinese, chinese, chinese, a bit better… Hao bu hao?” Reluctantly, I said, hao. Then he started pointing at the various prices on the board on the wall. Lots of Chinese here. The subtle differences of which were lost to me. I told him I wanted the cheapest option. Lots more Chinese followed. I said, hao. We had apparently settled on 58 kuai, about 10 dollars. Fine, I thought, let’s just get on with it. What I apparently agreed to was to let him take in the sides, yes, but to also thin out the mop-top and to do a bit of trimming there. Barbers don’t listen.
We chatted while he cut away. After the familiar exchange of what kind of foreigner I am, how long I’ve been studying Chinese, how long I plan to stay in China, I learned that he was from Jiangsu Province, could speak 四川话, Sichuan hua, Sichuan-ese, the incomprehensible western dialect I had become accustomed to in Chengdu, moved to Shanghai to study, but never went to class and could therefore not speak any English, then quit and became a barber, he said laughing. I laughed along with him, he’s cutting my hair.
When all was said and done he had given me a decent haircut. Not what I wanted but not a bad cut either, basically taking two weeks worth of hair growth off my head. It could have been much worse. I’m not moping around for what it’s worth. I went to pay my 58 kuai and the receptionist started to shove a VIP card in my hand, 200 kuai including today’s haircut. I’d get a free haircut next time and lots of perks, like shampooing and special style cuts and blah, blah, blah. I said no, I want to pay 58 kuai, please. Disappointed, he took my money. Pokee-barber went back to his chair.
I think it’s worth mentioning a quick bit about the perception of barber shops in China. And I want to re-iterate that my haircut experience was totally normal and everything that took place was expected. But at the same time it is no secret that many Chinese barber shops are fronts for brothels, or at least they were in 2007. Back rooms with creepy curtained doors double as storage space and other stuff. I’m not sure what the connection is and why barber shops do that. I decided when I was in Beijing that all Chinese barbers were suspect and everyone told me so. This place by Fudan though seems like a legitimate business full of bored college dropouts. But I’m here to educate and expose truths, so there you go.
Some old posts of mine on getting-haircuts-in-foreign-countries fun:
http://stephenadutton.blogspot.com/2013/03/monroe-in-moscow.html
http://stephenadutton.blogspot.com/2013/05/blustery-barcelona.html
Don’t forget, I welcome feedback. Feel free to reach out.
See you next week.
I also hit full-time-graduate-student-with-a-part-time-internship in full swing this week. Manageable so far but I foresee stressful times ahead on weeks I’ll have assignments due. The good news is it seems like I’m going to get a lot of writing in with the magazine. Lots of stuff I can publish, I think. In fact, in support of City Weekend’s Home & Office quarterly magazine supplement, I was able to write some blurbs in text boxes. You know, those shaded areas that distract you from the way better writing within the bulk of more important articles. In other words, something I wrote will be printed into a magazine. Making progress!
But I’ve also been sort of commissioned for a far more interesting project that should afford me a lot more leeway in the creative writing process. And the chance to write some full length articles. I’m working on a neighborhood spotlight, another magazine supplement, but a one time shot, a sit-on-the-shelf-for-a-while type project, about Shanghai’s Gubei and Hongqiao districts in the west of the city, also known as Koreatown and Little Japan. In support of this, I decided to make myself the self proclaimed expert on all things that this up and coming neighborhood has to offer. I made my way down from the isolation of Shanghai’s northern Yangpu district, where I live and where Fudan is located, down line 10, and one hour of staring at the Chinese commuters sitting across the train from me later, popped out to Yilin Road, way in the west and got to do some serious exploring. The neighborhood is an old one and now being revamped to accommodate an increasingly interested expatriate crowd. East Asian expats, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, etc. have been settling in this pleasant residential area for over 100 years and Western expats are taking notice. The area is very green, relatively quiet, and lots of small points of interest worth taking notice. So it should be fun to do some exploring of my own and write about my findings. I’ll try and save a lot of this experience for my the magazine (I’ll share later, I promise).
 | |
| Nanjing East Road, Shanghai's old pedestrian shopping street, my office is located in a building behind those shown here to the right |
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| An interesting find, black beer from Xinjiang Province, bought in a small international goods shop in the French Concession |
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| iPhone's auto-adjusting shutter exposure setting didn't do me any favors on this one |
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| This will be difficult to read. A safety notice in the elevator in my apartment building. I especially like point 7 |
In the past, in China, rather than bothering to get my haircut at all, I would just let it grow. It gets wild and curly and ridiculous. Moppish, I believe is an accurate term. I kind of like it when it does that. But it’s not super professional especially now when I’m a mature graduate student and also have a job and I’m getting older and all that. Fair enough. Time to man up and get a haircut.
I have a Mandarin phrasebook that I got when I was a student in Beijing years ago. It’s useful for finding the more colloquial ways of saying things. Of saying things that make more sense to the average “street” person, as I’ll call them. Textbooks often fill your head with obnoxiously formal grammar patterns and not so useful ways of saying things. Things that when said to a native speaker, says, ah okay, you’re studying Chinese. And when said to a non-native speaker, says, ah okay, you’ve studied the same book as me. My phrasebook has a chapter on health and beauty and a specific section on getting haircuts. Key words: 剪发, jianfa, haircut, 短一点, duan yidian, a little shorter, 上面你不用剪, shangmian ni buyong jian, you don’t need to cut the top, 我喜欢这个头发很长, wo xihuan zhege toufa hen chang, I like this part long, 后面, houmian, the back, 侧面, cemain, the sides. I practiced. A lot.
There’s a barber shop, well okay, beauty salon, across the road from the gate in my corner of the university’s campus. I heard the haircuts here were 20 kuai, about 3 dollars, pretty good deal. I popped in through the door, met the male receptionist who said to me, 要剪发吗? Yao jianfa ma? Here for a haircut? Okay, good sign, I recognized the exchange. I nodded curtly and he looked around to the many male hairdressers lazing about the waiting chairs, legs crossed, staring into their smart phones. He pointed to the one that looked like a Pokemon character, long spiked hair, streaks of red, buzzed on the sides, tight black leather jacket and pants, who looked up from his phone and led me to a vacant chair. I sat down, staring at myself in the mirror in front of me, composing myself. I initiated the dialogue. Things were going well. I told him I wanted to tidy up the sides a bit and that he needn’t cut the top, I’m letting that grow. He understood, we were on the same page. But he looked at me for a moment in the mirror, pausing a bit, and then this is what I heard: “Chinese, chinese, chinese, here…I think, chinese, chinese, chinese, a bit better… Hao bu hao?” Reluctantly, I said, hao. Then he started pointing at the various prices on the board on the wall. Lots of Chinese here. The subtle differences of which were lost to me. I told him I wanted the cheapest option. Lots more Chinese followed. I said, hao. We had apparently settled on 58 kuai, about 10 dollars. Fine, I thought, let’s just get on with it. What I apparently agreed to was to let him take in the sides, yes, but to also thin out the mop-top and to do a bit of trimming there. Barbers don’t listen.
We chatted while he cut away. After the familiar exchange of what kind of foreigner I am, how long I’ve been studying Chinese, how long I plan to stay in China, I learned that he was from Jiangsu Province, could speak 四川话, Sichuan hua, Sichuan-ese, the incomprehensible western dialect I had become accustomed to in Chengdu, moved to Shanghai to study, but never went to class and could therefore not speak any English, then quit and became a barber, he said laughing. I laughed along with him, he’s cutting my hair.
When all was said and done he had given me a decent haircut. Not what I wanted but not a bad cut either, basically taking two weeks worth of hair growth off my head. It could have been much worse. I’m not moping around for what it’s worth. I went to pay my 58 kuai and the receptionist started to shove a VIP card in my hand, 200 kuai including today’s haircut. I’d get a free haircut next time and lots of perks, like shampooing and special style cuts and blah, blah, blah. I said no, I want to pay 58 kuai, please. Disappointed, he took my money. Pokee-barber went back to his chair.
I think it’s worth mentioning a quick bit about the perception of barber shops in China. And I want to re-iterate that my haircut experience was totally normal and everything that took place was expected. But at the same time it is no secret that many Chinese barber shops are fronts for brothels, or at least they were in 2007. Back rooms with creepy curtained doors double as storage space and other stuff. I’m not sure what the connection is and why barber shops do that. I decided when I was in Beijing that all Chinese barbers were suspect and everyone told me so. This place by Fudan though seems like a legitimate business full of bored college dropouts. But I’m here to educate and expose truths, so there you go.
Some old posts of mine on getting-haircuts-in-foreign-countries fun:
http://stephenadutton.blogspot.com/2013/03/monroe-in-moscow.html
http://stephenadutton.blogspot.com/2013/05/blustery-barcelona.html
Don’t forget, I welcome feedback. Feel free to reach out.
See you next week.
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