I JUST WANT A TRIM

Many of you know how particular I am about who cuts my hair. In fact if memory serves me right I have had only 2 people cut my hair in the past 10 - 15 years. Well, it's been 5 weeks since I had my last haircut so as you can imagine my hair is getting long. I couldn’t go another week without a haircut.

Well y'all would be proud of me. I spoke to one of my colleagues and he told me where to go, so I went! I figured I'm now living in China so who would know if I emerged from this experience with a nightmare of a hair cut?

Imagine me walking up a flight of stairs to a salon thinking about how to describe what I wanted in a haircut. Well, before I could say a word the young lady behind the counter yelled something in Chinese to another girl and before I knew it she was escorting me to a wash station. I was instructed to lie down on my back, not in English of course, but in the international language of finger pointing and hand gestures. The girl proceeded to wash my hair, not once but twice for about 10 minutes. This was followed by a 15 minute head massage before the shampoo was rinsed from my hair. The massage included rubbing, patting, thumping, and carefully applying pressure to every pressure point on my head and face. By the way, the pressure starts softly and increases, almost to a point of pain, as the massage goes on. The final step was the girl putting her soapy fingers in to my ears and giving me an inner ear massage and cleanout. That was weird but at the same time it sure felt good. All of this was followed by a warm rinse and towel dry.

The next step was what I was dreading. As I walked over the stylist I kept thinking about the aftermath. What kind of haircut would I end up with? What would I look like? Would I end up with a new look for China? Well, I looked at the stylist and said "I just want a trim". I then proceeded to hold up some my wet hair and used my index and fore fingers to indicate ~1/2 inch. He looked at me without saying a word, broke out his electric clippers and proceeded to clip, cut, thin, and before I knew it he motioned for me to get up and go back to the wash station. I returned to the stylist chair after a quick rinse for some final touch ups and before I knew it, it was over!

Despite the fact not a word was spoken they seemed to know what I needed and just went on with their work. I guess all the anxiety was for nothing. The hair cut is probably one of the best I have had in a very long time! Of course, the shampoo and head massage probably put this experience on top of my list. By the way, this experience only cost me 50RMB ($7.35).

Can't wait for the next experience!

"TIC"