49 replies to this topic

[polar_zen]

He means shaving the queues off after the Qing Dynasty fell.

[Guangtou Xiansheng]

On a related note, does anyone have any idea how they managed to shave such a straight line along their heads? I shave my head everyday as I have done for the past 8 years and I am constantly struck by how difficult this must of been. My personal theory, of which I can find absolutely no evidence, is that they placed a board or something straight with a groove in it over their head. Can anyone help me out.

[kaiselin]

On a related note, does anyone have any idea how they managed to shave such a straight line along their heads? I shave my head everyday as I have done for the past 8 years and I am constantly struck by how difficult this must of been. My personal theory, of which I can find absolutely no evidence, is that they placed a board or something straight with a groove in it over their head. Can anyone help me out.

Welcome Guangtou Xianshang
Very good question for your first post, I had never thought about that before.
I wonder if someone else did the saving. Cause I know that it would be real easy to take off too much by accident if you were doing it all by feel.
It would take forever to grow back outjust to be long enough to braid back into the queue.

[Guangtou Xiansheng]

Welcome Guangtou Xianshang
Very good question for your first post, I had never thought about that before.
I wonder if someone else did the saving. Cause I know that it would be real easy to take off too much by accident if you were doing it all by feel.
It would take forever to grow back outjust to be long enough to braid back into the queue.

Thanks kaiselin
That's my point exactly, it would be very easy to shave off a chunk of hair and then you have this weird wavy line across your head. I asked one of my professors and she was also stumped. She told me that Zeng Guo-fan (曾國藩) talked about shaving his head in his journals, but didn't go into specific details. No one in my class had ever thought of that problem before either.

[fireball]

On a related note, does anyone have any idea how they managed to shave such a straight line along their heads? I shave my head everyday as I have done for the past 8 years and I am constantly struck by how difficult this must of been. My personal theory, of which I can find absolutely no evidence, is that they placed a board or something straight with a groove in it over their head. Can anyone help me out.

That is a good question. From what I have seen the paintings and photos of the Qing dynasty street scenes that included people getting their hair cuts, none of them seemed to show a board or guide or such things -- I did not pay too much attention to those details at the time so I may be wrong. I just remembered not seeing anything else in the barbers' hands besides the shaving knives.

Btw, a side story about the Qing dynasty barbers I heard from my youth. The Qing dynasty barbers' apprentice always used a water melon to practice shaving someone's head. After the practice, they just threw their sharp shaving knives at the water melons to stick the knives in the water melons for keeping. After a few years or their apprenticeship, their motions at finishing the shaving became very natural to them, and they wouldn't even think before they threw the knives at the melons. Now, imagine the said apprentice had finished his training and started to shave the head for his first human customer. What would happen at the end of the shaving?

I heard this story from my dad who had a "pig tail" till he was 8 years old even though the Manchu government was overthrown for 5 years before his pigtail was cut. According to him, their village was isolated, so the news did not get there for a while, but the chief reason was the fact that the elders in the village wanted to make sure the Manchu government was really gone and no one would come and chop out their heads for not obeying the imperial order after the rebellions (the revolution) were done. So... I think that answered someone's questions about whether there were someone died for keeping their pigtails. I guess many people kept their pigtails in order to make sure. There were also a few loyalists who never cut their pigtails all their lives. One of them was the internationally famous scholar and translator 辜鸿铭 (gu hong2 ming2). He knew 9 languages and was a professor for the Beijing University. All his life, he fought for keeping his Chinese style by keeping his pigtail and supporting the system of concubinage as well as women's bound feet. He was famous for his pigtail and his pigtail and his Qing dynasty robe were one of the famous scene in the campus of Beijing University in early Republic era.

Also, after I heard of this Qing dynasty barber's story, I was always a bit worried whenever I saw the old styled shaving knife in someone's hand. I could imagine young boys scaring each other with this tale when they went to the barbers in my father's youth.

Edited by fireball, 06 December 2007 - 11:00 AM.

[kaiselin]

I have been trying to think of other ways to get a straight line when shaving.
1]I know from shaving my husbands and sons heads and moustaches that it it much easier for me to get the proper outline of the beard then it is for them to do it themselves, (but of course there is the " Mom / Honey, you do it so much better, , then I do" trick most guys use when they don't want to do it themselves.)
But I've seen the horrible results when I have refused or been too busy and they do it .

2] Maybe the hairs along the edge were either plucked or waxed to keep the line straight.

[fireball]

I just thought of a method, but I am not sure whether that was used or whether it would actually work. For the Chinese women's wedding, there was a barbering technique for women called "Open the face", and it was using two strings to get the small facial hairs off the women's face including hairs at the edge of the forehead and sides of the face. I wonder whether the male barbers also used the same techniques to finish off the edges of men's shaved heads. It might keep the lines straight because strings were used.

[kaiselin]

I just thought of a method, but I am not sure whether that was used or whether it would actually work. For the Chinese women's wedding, there was a barbering technique for women called "Open the face", and it was using two strings to get the small facial hairs off the women's face including hairs at the edge of the forehead and sides of the face. I wonder whether the male barbers also used the same techniques to finish off the edges of men's shaved heads. It might keep the lines straight because strings were used.

HA ha , you beat me to that one. I was looking for the characters in my files, before I brought up that technique. I just copied and pasted them to something a couple of weeks ago in reference to a comment about Mulan, and it looks like I accidentally cut it as well, cause I cant find the characters in any of my files. , OOOOOH I hate it when that happens.

[kaiselin]

I found it, had to go back a few weeks

绞脸 jiao lian (formally, of woman) remove fine hair from face by the interweaving action of two threads held close to the skin.

[Guangtou Xiansheng]

Thanks kaiselin and fireball
Excellent suggestions
They still do 絞臉 here in Taiwan. When I first moved here you could see older women doing it on the side of the road. They seem to have moved inside now though. I am not sure that it would work on thicker hairs like head hair though. Then again I have never tried.
I like image of roadside barbers honing their skills on unsuspecting watermelons. A friend of mine told me that modern day western barbers practice shaving with straight razor using a balloon.
The plucking sounds pretty painful though kaiselin

[fireball]

The plucking sounds pretty painful though kaiselin

It was very painful -- I asked my mom to try it on me.

[kaiselin]

Thanks kaiselin and fireball
Excellent suggestions
They still do 絞臉 here in Taiwan. When I first moved here you could see older women doing it on the side of the road. They seem to have moved inside now though. I am not sure that it would work on thicker hairs like head hair though. Then again I have never tried.
I like image of roadside barbers honing their skills on unsuspecting watermelons. A friend of mine told me that modern day western barbers practice shaving with straight razor using a balloon.
The plucking sounds pretty painful though kaiselin

LOL, yeah, it is, but no less then waxing and its not as if the prossess of 绞脸 jiao lian is still pulling hair.
As man you probably don't pluck your eyebrows, but I can assure you it is painfull the first few times you do it but since you do it frequently after a while it doesnt hurt. Also pulling a hair of your head is not as intencely painful as pulling out a moustashe hair.
I have heard that begginers shave a peach until they get it right, but the thought of that really gives me the hebegeebees.

On a similar note, I was looking for something else but ran across this character, In a way it pertains to this post.

耐nài -to bear / to endure / to stand / to resist-{ etymology -beard而 required by law a punishment required if shaven. / to stroke 寸 the beard 而 and endure a problem - endure

[zhangzx]

In what year did the Qing government require the Han Chinese to wear the pigtails?

at 1645 1year after enter beijing,Dorgon imposed the Queue Order which order the han people to adopt into manchu hairstyle within 10 days or be killed. this is the famous Keep your hair and lose your head, or keep your head and cut your hair which lead to wide spread resistance