This is how we roll

A Tale of Two Haircuts


My first haircut in Shanghai was at an overpriced mall salon -- I paid more than US $30 (much higher than my great barber Don on Polk St.) to have  a “supervising hair technician” cut the left side half an inch shorter than the right.  He said, “Duibuqi (sorry), it come back.”  Yeah, but I won’t.  

Next time I asked a couple of neighbors where they went. The first guy, a Norwegian with a buzz cut, said he got his done on the street corner for 15 kuai (about $2.50). I wasn’t quite ready for that, and besides it’s freezing on the street corner -- almost as cold as our house.  A French guy with a soupcon more style gave me the name of a salon next to the big French grocery store, so I went in to try my luck.  The stylists there all have assistants, who in turn have assistants, so a gaggle of flunkies greeted me at the door, and I said  “dian tow-fah,”  an expression I’d learned two minutes earlier from our driver, Wang, meaning “haircut.”  This was a critical error, because now all the flunkies thought I was perfectly fluent in Chinese and began chatting away, asking me what I thought of Expo, or Yao’s latest injury, or if I wouldn’t mind sharing my mom’s meatloaf recipe. I have no idea.  I told them I spoke very little Chinese, but I said it in Chinese, so they didn’t believe me and my doom was sealed.  This has happened to me quite a few times. A lot of people seem to think language binary, an on/off switch -- you speak Chinese, or you don’t.  One expat I met said it’s people who’ve never learned, or tried to learn, or even imagined learning another language, so they don’t consider the enormous grey area between no Chinese, and Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

Anyway, I was led upstairs and shown a menu of options, in Chinese of course.  Well, except for a bit of Arabic, which I could read -- this consisted of the numerals #1, #2, and #3, with prices.  I chose the middle one, for 99 Kuai, or about 15 bucks.  I thought that seemed safe, but  I was wrong.

I spent most of the next hour with a salon assistant I’ll call Da Shou, or “Big Hands.”  Da Shou did things to me that I had to tell my wife about, just to make sure I hadn’t broken any vows. She did things to me with a q-tip that I’ve never even done to myself. It was mostly just a massage, but as I write that I can imagine I’m saying it to the judge at night court.  Da Shou was rather shockingly free of boundaries about handling customers.  She gave me a chest massage that was, well, more personal than anything I’ve gotten from a stranger since high school.  When I looked up in surprise and alarm, she met my eyes in the mirror with a frank stare and what could only be called a saucy smile.  At this point my inner dialogue is saying, “Relax, you uptight Westerner, this is normal, it’s just how they do things here.  That's how they roll -- don’t be a prude.”  Was I on the Chinese version of Candid Camera?  There were a few other people in the large room getting pre-haircut massages too, though none of the other masseuses appeared saucy -- bored, more like it.  Da Shou then began giving me an arm rub for which she found it necessary to place my hand directly on the geographic center of her lap, and exerted a little downward pressure. Another look of alarm from me, another frank look and saucy smile, extra sauce, from Da Shou.  Before you think this is a letter to Penthouse, I’ll tell you that I “ahemed,” pointed to my watch, and asked “Zhe ge shi tow-fuh ma?” or, “This is a haircut?”  Da Shou then stood up and reached for a a copy of Chinese Vogue, which she dropped in my lap with a mild smirk.  A few minutes later the “stylist” finally appeared, cut the right side half an inch shorter than the left, and I got out of there.  

I’m due for another haircut. I’m going to the street corner with my 15 kuai, and I’m leaving my coat on, too.




Three Elephants and a Lute Player

On a more pastoral note, I’ve been bringing the boys to the Shanghai Zoo in the mornings sometimes.  It’s just a few minutes from our house, and in these winter months there are very few people competing with us to see the lions, giraffes, gorillas or pandas. We’re often the only ones watching a group of zebras or elephants or what have you, and the boys love to be up close and personal, where the animals can give them frank stares and saucy smiles.  Keegan did his fine elephant impression for me in front of three big pachyderms, so I did mine in turn for him (my elephant is notoriously good, you’ll have to trust me); I was amazed to watch all three of the real elephants raise their trunks toward us and take several steps back, as if in deference.  A strange sight to see.

There are a few other people in the zoo in the early mornings, actually, but they aren’t there to see the animals.  Senior citizens can get a monthly pass to come in before 8 a.m. for almost nothing, and they do come, and they stay; they socialize, practice tai chi, sing, dance elaborate group dances, play mahjong or cards, or just hang out.  They show little or no interest in the zoo's permanent residents; they absolutely love to coo at Kai and Keegan, though.  The last time we were there, we made a slight wrong turn on the way to the pandas and came across a man playing the erhu, that two-stringed Chinese lute with a gourd at the bottom.  He was really good, too, so good that I brought the boys up closer to see him play, and he just lit up with a smile and started playing songs he thought they’d like, which meant “Happy Birthday,” and he was right -- Kai especially loves “Happy Birthday” and often sings it and blows out imaginary candles on no occasion whatsoever.  The lute player asked me where we were from -- I barely understood him but I caught the word “guojia” which means “country,”  and I told him we were “meiguo ren,” Americans.  So then the guy started playing “Clementine”, which I thought was very impressive. You know, the miner, the 49er . . . a perfect San Francisco song, and apparently the one American song he knew. Hey, I’m a sport, I know the words, so I started singing it.  As I did, the lute player's fan base, a clutch of seven or eight Chinese grannies, came over to us, having spotted Kai and Keegan, and moved in for the kill, pointing, cackling, trying to get the boys to dance with them.  They loved  that I knew the words to the song in English, and they all started singing it in Chinese.  The lute player then started in on Chinese songs I didn’t know, but it was fun to hear the old women sing and watch them strut their stuff, and we stayed with them for a couple of numbers before we headed off to find the pandas again.  If the boys had been a few years older they might have been mortified by a dozen aspects of this spectacle, but as it happened, they seemed to enjoy it just fine.  In fact, Kai has been asking me to play that song on the ipod for days, and I put it on “repeat” for him -- he calls it “Lemon Time.”

For photo and video fans, the linked visuals were not made at the zoo, but at another park, Cheng Feng Gongyuan, where we enjoyed a long walk around the lake, I got hit in the head by an eagle kite ( a great way to meet the kite fliers), and we discovered a rinky-dink amusement park that the boys thought was as cool as Disney World.  Check out the car-boat on the lake -- I think it’s a Dodge Dart.


A special shout-out to ALL of my former students at Capuchino High School.  I do not miss grading or planning, but I do miss teaching, because I miss you guys.  Now, stop playing around on the Internet and go do your homework!  (Yes, even those of you who have graduated from high school, AND college, this goes for you, too!  Get busy.  I mean it.) All best thoughts and love to you, my fellow Mustangs. 


We're going to Thailand tomorrow!  Yay!  It's WARM in Thailand!  I'll be back on the blog in a couple of weeks.