Haircut

Little Guy needed another haircut. His first haircut happened when I was teaching in Beijing. He didn't enjoy it. There was much discussion about his sideburns. The hairdresser wanted to leave them and refused to cut them off. Sideburns are thought to be good here. Apparently it means you have good energy. Lots of guys work at growing sideburns.
This time my student volunteered to take us to his guy. The place was much nicer than the usual hole in the wall where we have gone before. It was full of hip guys. Little Guy wanted nothing to do with it. He started shaking his hand "no" as soon as we walked in. He had a throw down when we tried to take off his coat. He refused to go over to the hairwash area. The barber was so cool about it. He said decided to just cut the hair. Little guy was wrangled into the apron and just sat so dejected. It is interesting because when he goes to the doctor he doesn't mind blood draws or anything like that. But a haircut....

Little Guy's fighting face

After a while he realized it wasn't torture and he got very excited! He started making faces at himself in the mirror. I don't have the sign for "be still" so it became a little challenge. But the barber was so patient.

Trapped in the chair, Wouldn't look up

The barber had a long discussion about the sideburns and then shaved them off. The barber had fake side burns, so you could really see that he thought it was a pity to waste natural sideburns.

It's not so bad, but I'm still scared. Check out the barber's do

My student is a law professor and so we had a long talk about the profession of haircutting. I found it quite interesting. If you don't pass the high school entrance exam then you can go to technical school to become a barber. It costs 4000rmb for one year. The barber graduates and makes 3000rmb a month. So it is a pretty good job. He said that our students of the university pay 4000RMB each year and graduate and can't find a job, so maybe a being a barber is a good thing.
The haircut cost 6RMB.
On the way home Little Guy remembered the way we had come and we were quite impressed with his sense of direction since he had never walked that way before.

Harbin, China