It's not what it looks like — Chengdu, China
Chengdu 2007. Not a single spot I can recognize after 25 years. So many large buildings have sprung up that dwarf the images of my recollection. Yet it is not a truly modern city. There is a constant sense of provincialism when you walk the streets. The malls are there as a copy of those in Shanghai, Beijing, Hongkong. But the attendants who staff the brand department stores come from another world. They wear their trendy company outfits as were they smock-frocks or aprons, their feet are sticking out their shoes and their behaviour is styled to serve, but the execution painfully insecure. The small shops are much more fun. Like ants the little entrepreneurs work their way through the day. But also here, there is the sense of having to be modern, without knowing what that should look or feel like.
"Funny barbershop," Keir says. “Look at the hair-modelling and the waves of the hairdressers. Wild music. But their clothes! Has got nothing to do with their hair style. Still, don't you want to give it a try? You said you wanted a haircut once we got to China.”
I sit down, lean back for the shampoo treatment. Around me it is all restless jumping and screaming, like vendors in the market, fighting against the music that blasts out of the speakers. Half lines are sung along with the music. Everyone looks for the scissors that have been picked by someone else. My guy is looking at his friend to whom he talks while working on my hair, making wild gestures inbetween cuts. I fear that his funky haircut is not a style, but the result of a collegue using the same technique while cutting his hair. I think my habit of closing my eyes during the process is not a good one now. But at the end the result is just as I wanted it. Except for the deaf ears the next ten minutes.
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