Living in China, for me, is like going to a really ethnically singlular hair cutting school.
For years, I've been cutting my own hair. It started after spending countless Saturday afternoons getting washed, cut, and styled...only to return home, get out the kitchen scissors, and start trimming, hacking, and shaping the new coif that didn't fully please me. I realized that my closely studying the stylist instead of making ridiculous small talk had resulted in some mad chopping skills. I put them to use on myself, my friends, my friends' friends...really anyone who didn't want to pay for what I could do for free. It was fabulous!
This self-styling carried on with the occasional profession intervention (the desire for a day of pampering or learning a new technique or dropping $50) for almost all of college and my short life thereafter. And my hair has been pretty unique because of it; lack of professional training means you don't have to follow any rules.
But in China, everyone literally has the same hair. So they are much more creative to have a fresh and interesting style atop their slight frames that are also exactly identical. This creates mad jealousy in my mind. I constantly see new styles that I want atop my more than slight and incredibly different physique. And this, my friends, has left me with quite a dilemma.
I packed my haircutting supplies (a pair of proper hair style scissors and a super snazzy hair razor) when I came to China, thinking that I'd probably just let it grow for the time I was here. Originally, I didn't see any need to cut my hair. (I was growing out my latest hair adventure [asymmetry with a big chunk of bleached blonde] and liking the beraggled way it looked.) However, the hair jealousy led me to start chopping. And chopping. And chopping.
I feel like a girl who's in beauty school who learns a new style and immediately wants to apply it. The hair gets shorter and shorter and shorter as the semester grades are calculated. Most of my friends who've been through Aveda came out with pixie cuts dyed purple or some other extreme-in-every-way hairstyle. While I haven't hit the rainbow dye (although I have considered it), I am verging on the too-short-to-keep-up-affordably 'do. I think I've cut my hair five times in the last month. (The dyed portion was flushed long ago, but these silly Chinese still think I'm a blondie...)
Somebody stop me! All my locks are being flushed down my square Chinese toilet in intervals that are not nearly far enough apart.
Short as it may be, my hair is looking great! My staring contests with Chinese hairdos on public transportation has proven an infinite wealth of knowledge. My resume after China might include the phrase "Asian hairstyle guru" after all these escapades. Or it might read "Hair shears junkie." It all depends on your outlook...
