A close shave in Shanghai (China)

“Friends…eh…” The consulate official was suspicious. What should have been a simple matter of adding more pages to my passport had turned into an interview. I was led to a room with a round table and asked to wait. A few minutes later, a serious-looking official entered and sat across. Without any introductions, he asked for my passport and began leafing through the pages.

He was interested in knowing why I was in China. I explained I was visiting friends. He wanted to know who my friends were. I talked about little Lynn from Guangzhou, Nick and Gaojing from Shanghai and some other people I met while travelling on trains. Perhaps satisfied that my friends were not from the ministry of state security, he relaxed and authorized my new passport.

I needed some photos for my new passport. I wanted to get a shave before the photos, but I could not find a barbershop. The consulate was in a complex with several apartment blocks.I saw a shop that looked like a beauty salon. The girl there opened the door and asked If she could help me. I told her I needed a shave, but it was okay as it seemed like they only served female customers. The girl reached out, pulled me inside and placed me in a chair. She sent a kid to go buy shaving foam. After applying the foam, she wedged a naked safety blade between her thumb and finger and started shaving me.

That 20 odd minutes must have been the stillest I had been in my life. The girl later said that I was the first male customer she had given a shave to. In China, no one says no to business.

Lunch with the “Friends..eh…” later in the week.

Update October 2004: Growing up in the 1960s (China)

I always bug my friends in China to tell me about their life in the 1980s/90s.Or their parents into telling me about life in the 1950s, the 60s and the 70s. I love looking at old brownish photographs from those days and absorbing the things (furniture, household stuff, cityscape) in the background.

I am reading “The Attic” by Guanlong Cao. He talks about growing up in China, 20 years after the revolution. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in studying modern history of China. You read about distant and near events unfolding from the point of view of the family. Interesting are the author’s description of Shanghai street markets of his childhood days.

The Sikhs had been brought to Shanghai by the British during the colonial times, primarily to serve as gate watchman. After the revolution their quiet personalities carried over into their new, meager business. Off in a corner of the market a tall gloomy Indian crouched beside the hind leg of his horse. A huge white turban rode above a pair of deeply socketed eyes. Patiently he waited for a rare customer to come over for a cup of freshly squeezed mare’s milk. As a ritual some mothers like to feed their newborns a few spoonfuls of horse’s milk. They believed that the galloping speed of the horse would boost the quickness of their babies’ mind.

And the food!

Sticky-rice balls, fried rice cakes, scallion pancakes, steamed bread, meat-filled buns, boiled sesame dumplings, seep-fried pork steaks, skewers of barbecue lamb, fragrant steam and greasy smoke rose and lingered above the Penglai market from dawn until midnight.

Now, we are hungry, more details about the book at Amazon.com: Books: The Attic: Memoir of a Chinese Landlord’s Son

Update October 2016:  A similar occurrence in Vietnam reminds me of this incident in Shanghai.

What is the Vietnamese word for 差不多？I was just commenting yesterday at old Asia hand post that some experiences in Vietnam remind me of time in China in the early 2000s. Today I walked into a neighbouring hairdresser to get a shave. The girl did not have a razor, but that did not dissuade her, she just unpacked a safety razor blade, and wedging the blade in her fingers, made my stubble disappear. The photo at the top is from Vietnam.

差不多 (chau bu duo) Is a Chinese phrase used to describe the process of just getting something done via a hack. A bit like jugaad in India.