It’s been 5 months since I last got my hair done! 5 months! I last got it done in Mexico, so before I head to Ireland, I very badly needed to get something done to it. At home I could get away with going every 2 months, so 5 was really stretching it. I’ve only got my hair done in China twice. The first time they charged me a huge amount of money, (because I was foreign) and it was literally orange. (Although they seemed extremely happy with it) So I didn’t go back to them. The second time was near my campus. They got the colour right and was cheap! Plus, they also initiated me as a ‘VIP’ client. Bring my card to them next time and I would get a big discount.
So I thought I’d head back to the latter place, I am a VIP, I may as well make the most of this privilege. I walked in at 2:45…..leaving at 5:45!! 3 hours!!!! And one of the most stressful 3 hours I’ve ever had at a hairdressers! This has now made me even more scared to go to the hairdressers in China.
Everything went fine at the beginning. My Chinese PA wrote in Chinese what I wanted, grand. They sat me down and did the colour. However, as soon as they finished putting it on, they whisked me over to the wash basin. I thought ‘This wasn’t like the last time, I spent ages with the colour in my hair’. But whatever, I did what I was told.
So the colour was washed out and I sat back down again. They started drying my hair. I looked on my shoulder and I noticed my hair was sort of green blue. I thought it must have been the trick of the light. So I relaxed. Then, another few strands fell beside my left eye. I glanced, ‘God, It actually looks green/blue’. Then I started to panic, it actually was. I tried not to get flustered. Fortunately I had no mirror in front of me to look at the result. By this stage I was sweating, from the heat of the place plus the fact that my hair was ruined. All I wanted was a nice brown colour, nothing mad. I didn’t dare look around me; a foreigner with green/blue hair was bound to draw eyes.
Three hairdressers were now standing around me picking up strands of my hair. I heard one say in Chinese the colour green. I thought ‘yeah it frigging is green!!’ I thought ‘How am I going to go home with this hair, I have to take a bus, subway and another bus home, which is 1 hour away. Everyone’s going to be looking at me’.
But then I saw they started making a new colour up, Thank god I thought. Although I was still nervous that they wouldn’t be able to get the colour right. I was just surprised that the first time I went into them they got the colour fine. So they did the next one, all of this took over 2 hours; I think I lost about 3 pounds just by perspiring.
Again, they took me to the wash basin and rinsed my hair. This time I knew they weren’t going to put another colour in, as they put shampoo and conditioner in. By this stage all I wanted was to get out of there, yet I still needed to dry and cut my hair!
This time, they brought me to sit down in front of a mirror. I was nervous looking at my hair. I checked it over, no, no green. Thankfully it was ok, although the colour is nowhere near to the one I picked in the book. It looks exactly like the hair colour I had before, just with the roots done, although disappointed that It wasn’t the glossy dark brown I asked for, it was a big improvement to the previous green/blue.
Then came the cut, which was fine. He did a good job with that. So all that only came to 148元. Or 20 euro….for 3 hours of work. . . . and two colours…. and me perspiring and stressing like a mad woman. God after that I don’t know if it was worth it.
My thinking behind this hair disaster is that they are not used to foreigners hair. Chinese hair is obviously very black, and its quite thick, whereas mine is brown and quite thin. I think they use different colours here in China than back home, and maybe they don’t exactly know how to mix up the colours for my hair.
So after all that, I’m more nervous than ever to go to a hair dressers here in China. Maybe next time I’ll look in Chengdu for a place that does foreign hair.
Well, I’ll worry about that in another 5 months maybe. . .
再见!
Aisling