When we first entered the college at Long Hu we were amazed to see a large mirror on a stand right near the entrance. In this photo you can just see part of it at the bottom of the stairs.
We thought maybe this had once been a ballet school or some such - why else would anyone need such a large mirror?
We also noticed the lack of a mirror - other than the tiny one in the bathroom cabinet - in our apartment; and other teachers had the same problem. I found myself checking my clothing before going to work by looking at my reflection in the TV. The students were maybe lacking mirrors in their apartments too - some of them had tiny hand-mirrors that they gazed into in class when they didn't feel like concentrating anymore. After a while these teenagers managed to break their mirrors, and I often saw them peering lovingly into a dangerous-looking shard of mirror. One day in Zhengzhou I came across a little shop that sold mirrors - the long thin kind that you hang on your bedroom wall - and I carried one home on the bus, carefully. That was the same day that Bea bought herself a long Chinese sword and brought that home on the bus too, that was another adventure.
It took us a while to find the mirror shop. We had been looking out for places where we might get one, and so we started noticing them. We noticed, for instance, that our favourite tiny dumpling restaurant down the muddy street in the village of Xiao Qiao ("Little Bridge"), while lacking in most facilities, nevertheless had a full wall-sized mirror - albeit with cracks across it (sticky-taped). We wondered where they got it, how they got it in there, and why they had obviously put all of their funds into purchasing the wall mirror rather than other furniture.
And we noticed that other schools we visited had similar large mirrors near their entrance. We would see staff and students alike spending considerable amounts of time preening themselves in front of the mirror, paying no heed to others coming down the stairs and wanting to get past - or wanting their turn with the mirror.
Fast food restaurants, such as Micky D's, have a joint (men and women) wash-stand and mirror outside of the public facilities. So, while munching into a burger and fries, we could often sit there and watch the young and the apparently egotistic admiring themselves and fixing up their facial blemishes.
The young people are particularly fastidious about their hair. I guess it irritates them fiercely that there are so many people with the same hair, and they just want to be different, individual. I am intrigued that anyone can spend that much time checking and re-checking that each and every spikey strand is pointing upwards at exactly the right angle.
My first haircut in this dark-haired country was a surprisingly pleasant experience. My hair is fading - faded - auburn, and naturally wavy, very fine and quite thick ... apparently exactly what so many of them would like to have, minus the occasional silver strand. Down in the village near the university there is a whole street of hairdresser's shops, so I just walked along and picked about the third one along, at random as I had no real basis for my decision. The guy who seemed to be in charge had a few words of English, and remarkably offered me the "no wash, just cut" option, which I was glad of. The whole business only took a few minutes - despite the obvious need for the chap cutting my hair to play with it for an extended period of time and for everyone round about to gather and discuss it. And it only cost me 8 RMB - just over a dollar. And I was very pleased with the result.
When (my 18 year old daughter) Bea was coming to the end of her time in China, she decided she wanted to change her hairstyle, so we asked our minder to take us to a hairdresser in Zhengzhou - she said she knew a very good one. I decided I may as well have another trim while we were there. Bea had a pleasant hair-cut experience, with the young staff all gathering around to play with her hair for a good fifteen minutes or so before being game to cut it. It only cost her about $4 (25 RMB) - not bad for such a classy establishment.
There was no one available immediately to do my hair, unless I was willing to have the best and most expensive one, that would cost me $8 (50 RMB) - I figured I could probably afford that.
Well, that was a different experience. After being clothed in a special gown, then having my hair washed - lying down on my back, a new sensation - and my head massaged, and then my ears lovingly and gently cleaned, I was seated in front of the mirror ready for his lordship to work his magic.
He wasn't cutting very much off, tiny fragments with each snip. I sat there watching the customer opposite me who already had a number 3 cut having his hair checked and individual strands scissor-snipped a millimeter at a time, then combed and blown and snipped some more - I couldn't understand the words, but it appeared the hairdresser said that it was all done but the client was unhappy so they went back to the sink to wash it again and then sat down to work on it some more. Meanwhile my man worked and worked at mine, millimetres at a snip. Finally he seemed to have finished - but it was only a pause, there were more stages yet. There was the teasing and the blow-drying (although my hair was already thoroughly dry) and the plumping out - I was beginning to be afraid of ending up like Mary Tyler-Moore. He continued for more than an hour, while Bea finished her stint and sat "reading" a (Chinese) magazine and smiling patiently.
In the end he did a reasonable job, once I got home and washed it and pushed it all back into shape. My next "do" in Wuxi on the way through to Oz for our holiday was a similar experience. This time I was treated to a shoulder and neck massage, and arms, hands, fingers for a good half an hour by a young chap before the master appeared and was ready to cut my hair. This one had his own special technique - he would take a small lock of hair and twist it, then snip into it two or three times with the point of his scissors. He did this over and over ... and over for an hour or so.
And now I am afraid because I really need another haircut. There appear to be a lot of hairdressers along our street - they have the turning stripey poles. But at night they have red lights, so do they actually cut hair at all?
Maybe I'll just grow my hair.
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