A.W. Gamble

This entry happened in Nanjing a few days ago but this was the first time I sat down to write about it.  It’s a little bit long now that I’ve seen it all down, but here’s the story.

During our second day in Nanjing Sara and I decided to check out getting a hair cut, nothing fancy, just a trim.  We found a salon called Chic just down from our hotel.  We were hesitant to enter because it was very young and very hip.  Also we knew absolutely no chinese so it would be hard to communicate.  We entered and the first thing Sara said was, “English?”  They stared at us for a little bit and then yelled for someone in the back.  A young man came out who was able to speak a little broken english and he ended up translating for us.  He said that our hair cuts would be 60 yuan, or about US$8.  We agreed and then they started by washing our hair.  I’ve never had my hair professionally washed and didn’t think that this service would ever be necessary, but once they started it was amazing.  It’s like a head massage with hot water.  I didn’t know that my scalp could even feel such things.  I think I might get another hair cut just for the shampooing. 
    After my hair was washed and partially dried I was taken over to my stylist who was waiting for me.  It was strange at first and I felt bad for the guy who got stuck with me, the american, because I had no clue what I wanted done.  I’m not one to get anything crazy and I’ve always struggled with what to tell a hair stylist about what to do.  I don’t know what to call it, just make it shorter.  I should have known from looking at each of the worker’s haircuts that I wasn’t getting out of there with just a trim. 
    The stylist started by combing my hair straight down.  He then pushed it all to one side of my face in a sweeping fashion and looked at me as if waiting for my reaction.  I shook my head no and then he pushed it to the other side.  Same thing.  No.  He then pulled it all up.  By now I was starting to realize that this was not going to be like any haircut I’ve ever had before.  I finally gave up with this last offer and I accepted.  With a direction to head in he started to cut my hair.  To his credit he did the whole thing with scissors.  Because of the language barrier I was never really sure what was agreed upon and so each new thing he worked on could have been his last as far as I knew.  I just watched him work and hoped that he was going to keep working. 
    Once the hair was an acceptable length, which was another quasi-secession on my part they took me back to get my hair washed again.  This time to get rid of any extra hairs.  And there were a lot because he used the thinner quite a bit.  I was surprised that after he used it he went through with a comb and the tips of his scissors and meticulously removed the already cut hair.  The second hair washing was quite a bit shorter than the first.  After they took me back to my chair, for what I didn’t know, and then the stylist tried once again to understand what it was I wanted.  If I had known myself I could have told him, but I had no clue.  I would have been happy to leave the way I was but that would have been an insult to such a skilled stylist.  We somehow ended up on a faux-hawk and so he set about getting that done.  He first dried my hair quite a bit with a hair drier, and then with the drier still on used it towards the bottom of my face pointed up to get the hair going up in the front.  While he was doing this he was rubbing gel into it to get it to stay.  In the end it was very impressive and I got a haircut I was pretty happy with.  More importantly I got a story. 
    I’m pretty sure that my chinese haircut wasn’t just a story for me because afterward, with their camera, they took a photo of me with my stylist.  It was only after they did this  that I asked them to take one more but with my camera.  I will never forget my chinese haircut, but maybe they will never forget their American haircut. 

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