My friend Peaches’s hair was so beautiful that, having her photograph taken for a college art project at eighteen, the photographer commented, “Your hair must be the envy of horses everywhere.” Her friend’s mother ragged her friend, “Take care of your hair! Look how nice Peaches’s is!” But Peaches didn’t even brush her hair.
Now it’s shaved at the sides, undercut, with a swooping bit that slides across and plumes of turquoise, aqua and royal purple sliced into it. It always falls perfectly. We go to a restaurant in U-Town mall and eat honeycomb noodles in mushroom broth, home-made tofu, beans in slippery cold loop noodles, flat ribbon noodles with chili and shredded greens, two Flintstones lamb shanks on the bone and, to finish, yogurt with honey.
“I swear and promise that we will serve you to the best of our ability, that our food is pure and contains no MSG and that we will deliver it to you within twenty eight minutes,” recites our waitress. She adds to Peaches, “I love your hair. Unfortunately, working here, I’m not allowed to colour mine, or cut it.”
The food is so plentiful that I bet Peaches one yuan that we won’t be able to finish it. We do (and I am unable to eat for 24 hours afterwards). As we finish up she comments, “It’s common for women workers to be banned from cutting their hair. In schools, too, girls’ hair must be between two certain lengths. And boys’ hair isn’t allowed to be too long. It should be less than a few centimetres.”
To read my China Flash series of articles about contemporary China, please click here or explore some of the links below:
To read my China Flash series of articles about contemporary China, please click here or explore some of the links below:
- Lean In Beijing on corporate ambition, new sexism and awesome girls in China
- Film-maker Jenny Man Wu on contemporary Chinese women’s wit, pain and ambivalence
- Benedicte Bro-Cassard, Beijing fashion photographer, on luxury, sugar daddies and sugar daughters
- Kong Lingnan, Beijing painter, on natural beauty and human ugliness
- Writer Kerry Brown on the seven elite men who rule a country with Communist roots and capitalist shoots
- Writer Zhang Chao on media misogyny, social changes and the pressures facing young Chinese women
- ABS Crew: Beijing graffiti artists on legal, semi legal and illegal Chinese street art
- My friend writes me a delicate poem to explain the intense Beijing seasons
- Even afternoon tea says something about modern, monetised China
- Porcelain dolls, bad Samaritans and the law