And Eight Inches off the Legs, Please

A few weeks after I arrived in China, I did something that I hadn’t done in twenty years: I paid someone to cut my hair. The last time I’d done that, I was still living with my parents, who would bribe me into the chair by threatening to withhold things like car privileges, college tuition, heat, and food if I refused. Eventually, I decided that my hair was more important than their support. I moved out, let my hair grow long, and paid my own way through school. For the occasional trim, I relied on my girlfriend or her mother.

Later, when Sandy and I got married, I worked a small scissors clause into the vows. This required little work on her part at first, for I didn’t cut my hair at all for two five-year spans. But there are few things sadder than a man’s ponytail streaked with gray, and, in recent years, the clause had begun to cause Sandy to do some real work with those scissors. Surely this contributed to the stresses that led to our present separation.

Hence, I found myself alone in China, with my hair growing up rather than down in the insufferable Suzhou summer air. People were staring at me constantly, and I feared that my afro might be part of the problem. Something had to be done. I hoped that a haircut might make me look a little more Chinese.

Fortunately, there’s a barbershop that shares a parking lot with the Dongwu hotel where I live. My friend Liru had offered to come along and serve as interpreter. However, I declined and decided to go it alone, figuring that the only way I’d ever learn the language was to try to speak for myself, even when I lacked the words. Considering the resulting butchery, this was probably a mistake.

But language wasn’t my biggest obstacle. Although it’s a little embarrassing to admit it, for decades I’ve had a fear of being touched by strangers. I once went five years without having my teeth cleaned, so frightened was I by dental hygienists. Something about women putting sharp objects inside my body under bright lights felt akin to torture to me, with the rinse jets standing in for water-boarding. Since barbers keep their sharp objects on the outside, I felt up to the challenge this time.

Even so, my aversion to the touch of strangers was definitely tested in the barbershop. Not only did the barber cut my hair; he also washed it in a little sink in the back of the shop. It felt very odd to have somebody else’s fingers kneading my soapy scalp, and I had to squelch a strong desire to burst out laughing. I managed to suppress the urge, for this barber was not to be toyed with. He was a poor advertisement for himself, with a haircut that made him look like Suzhou’s answer to Moe, with me playing Larry. I knew he’d say “wei shenme ni” (“why you” in Chinese) and slap me if I got out of line. Or turn me into Curly.

Back in the chair, I felt like he was cutting away my bangs altogether, which gave me a view of just how much my hairline has receded in recent years and a sense of what I would look like if I were bald. Here, the language barrier did work against me, for I’d yet to learn the Chinese word for “stop.” Then an old Chinese man came in and sat in the chair next to mine, a man with a completely bald crown and little tufts of hair above the ears, a man needing a haircut no more than Mr. Magoo. He taunted me by his presence, a mirror into my own hairless future. Then I had to squelch an impulse to cry. Fortunately, the barber did leave some bangs after all, and I left feeling weak-kneed and looking a little butchered but not so bad as I had feared.

However, any expectation that a haircut would help me blend in was quickly deflated. The next morning, I rode my bicycle to the Couple’s Garden—a garden that my guidebook had assured me was immune to the crowds that ruin the mood of so many of its peers. It proved an unfortunate choice, and not only because a newly separated man ought not go alone to a place with such a name. The garden was packed with people, most of whom followed flag-waving guides giving the history of the garden through dueling megaphones. I climbed onto a rock to escape from the crowd only to hear the word “waiguoren” (foreigner) coming out of one of the megaphones. I looked down to see a group of Chinese tourists looking up at me, taking pictures. It was only then that I realized I needed to tell the barber to take eight inches off the legs, color my hair black, and dip my whole body in a bath of skin dye. Someone else could handle the plastic surgery.

Now, as I enter my fourth month in China, I feel much less self-conscious about my status as an outsider. Winter has come to Suzhou, and the cold air has driven out the humidity, allowing my hair to grow back generally down rather than up and out. I’m sure people still stare at me, but I don’t notice it so much anymore. Besides, I’ve discovered that there are some advantages to being different. One of my American colleagues here remarked that I am the third tallest man in China. Numbers one and two—Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, respectively—are currently away in America playing in the NBA, which leaves only me. I’ve been exploiting this advantage by playing more basketball than I have since I was a teenager. In the US, I'm a pretty average player, but here, my height makes me exceptional, and it's a boost to my ego to delude myself into thinking that, just shy of 40, I'm really good. I know, though, that one game in the US will quickly disabuse me of the notion. For now, I'll just enjoy the sensation, along with all the other pleasures that a year in China can bring, even for a freakish waiguoren like me.