The cutting edge of the Chinese New Year
Red lanterns hung on street lights, crimson-themed store windows, preserved fish and Chinese sausage dangling from wet market walls, long queues in front of traditional food shops and Spring Festival couplets posted on household doors.
Yes, the Chinese New Year is nigh, and one of the still observed old traditions is to get a haircut before the nation’s most important holiday.
It’s a superstitious throwback to the belief that getting one’s hair cut in the first month of the Lunar New Year would put a curse on a maternal uncle.
So to spare uncles any possible hex, or maybe just to look good at family reunions, many residents go to barbers and hair salons in the runup to the holiday, which falls on February 5 this year.
The Chinese character for “head” — tou — also means “beginning,” and therefore, getting a haircut implies making a fresh start.
For hairdressers, the week before the festival is the busiest time of the year.
I phoned three old hair salons in Shanghai and requested interviews, but staff all told me they were too busy to stop and talk.
Traditional hair salons have been gradually disappearing, replaced by chic, modern beauty parlors. According to Zhang Xueming, 94, who famously did hairstyles for celebrities like film actress Zhang Yu, badminton champion Zhang Ailing, scholars and foreign diplomats, today’s Yuyuan Road was once known as a barber street, with around 10 hairdressing salons.
In order to get a glimpse of the few remaining, almost-century-old stores, I visited them as a customer.
The first shop I entered was Hujiang. Its name harks back to one of Shanghai’s most famous salons, the Hujiang Barber Shop on Huaihai Road M. It’s said that during the late 1980s and the early 1990s, that shop often had long queues stretching to Maoming Road S.
The original salon was founded by Cai Wanjiang in 1946. It closed in 2001. Some former staff opened Hujiang later. Walking along Nanchang Road, I saw two shops named Hujiang. The one located at No. 183 is likely to be the most well-known.
The window displays seven faded photos of classic hairdos and a list of seven hairdressers with “state-level” titles. Entering the shop, I was told that the only hair cutter for women was off duty that day, so I just had my hair washed.
A middle-aged woman in a white shirt inside a red waistcoat tended