If you want to get haircut you just go to the next hairdresser shop, right?
Wrong! Think twice!
On my first China trip I was surprised about the masses of hairdresser shops - but I thought many people - many hairdressers....ok, also the late opening hours seemed to be a convinient customer service - customer is king so to say. Also the mainly female workers standing at the shop doors calling for what I thought was a haircut offer in Chinese could have been a healthy sign of competition. After all on Chinas political/economical system there is communism written on the outside, but with Intel inside!
So the day came when a haircut was unavoidable for me and THANK GOD Omed accompanied me to one of the million barbour shops. When I asked for the price the nice helpful female hairdresser told me 100 Yuan and showed to the backrooms.....100RMB??? Whaaaaaat? 100 Yuan means 50 meals in a streetkitchen, 100 Yuan means 100 busrides through the whole city...100 Kuai for a simple haircut - IMPOSSIBLE! Even the worst tourist-rip-off would not come out with this number!
Ok, my Chinese was and still is quite poor, nearly none-existent, but were we talking about the same thing???
So I guess my expression really looked surprised and she and all her female co-workers (why were there ONLY female hairdressers in this shop by the way???) started to laugh heavily and reduced the price to 10 Yuan.
OK, I finally got it, lets check the facts: only women, 100RMB, backrooms.....this was the oldest business of human mankind!
Jesus, I prefered to run around with my monkey hair for the last days of my China stay. And even if I would have let my hair get cut there, I doubt that their skills are made for cutting hair!!!
So be aware of hairdresser shops where only women work. The same for shops where only men work, yes, they have this, too ;)
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on May 12, 2005
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