Connecticut western news., 1871-09-29
S FiXingo the Hair in China,

I submitted to the operation in Pekin as an experiment., and have to this day a lively recollection of the performance. Stretched at full length on 8 bamboo seat or easy chair I was pummelled all over the body, but more particularly on the chest, legs and arms by a stout, brawny attendant with his partially closed fists, after the style once so popu- lar at the Hammam," till I was fain to cry Peccaoi. Sometimes the "douche" is administered, but only rarely. The barber's outfit is simple, consisting of good razor, which costs about three pence, a strop which usually is nothing more than a strip of stoutish calico cloth costing 8 penny more. The chief items of expense in this elaborate "kit" are the accessories. The metal basin and the bamboo pail underneath, and the pole surmounting all, which serves as the emblem of his craft, are, however. scarcely more expensive than the razor and strop, so that on the whole it does not cost very much to furnish barber shop in China. The tariff of charges of those engaged in this branch of industry is is'correspondiugly low. Three cash, equal to about half farthing of British money is the sum ordinarily asked for simply shaving the head. If the queue is plaiGed and interwoven with fresh silk the scale of charge correspondingly rises. Shaving and braiding the queue, retailing 0 worn-out stump and shampoo ing constitute all the arts required of the barber. False moustaches and boards of 8 rude kind, such as are worn by actors in the public shows, are not made by his hands, and of making perukes and wigs, so much in vogue among the civilized nations of Europe, he is alto gether ignorant. In fact the Chinese gentleman is far from being so particular about his head as the English gentleman slaves at all he usually slaves daily if he dimes out he will often repeat the operation during the twenty-four hours. On the other hand, the majority of even the better classes in China shave but twice week, and the laboring classes but once. In the case of mourning, the law-or rather recognized custom, more powerful than law-is to permit the head to go unshaven for months, the precise time being regulated by the measure of relationship to the deceased. But as the thirteen months exemption from shaving prescribed for the loss of either of ones parents, if rigidly enforced, would produce crop of hair too exube- rant for even Chinese society to endure, where strict regard for etiquette forbids the clean polish of the razor-blade, other expedients are brought into requisition to keep the stumps of the hair within due bounds. Since the incoming of the Mantchou power, barbers' shops, primi- tive and simple as they are now, must have undergone a more marked change than those we are accustomed to see nearer home, for the native Chinese, till they received this badge of foreign yoke, did not allow either knife or scis- sors to pass upon their head, but were the long haired race' which the T@ping insurgents are wishing to become. Pre- vious to their subjection by the Tartars, the fashion was to bind the long hair in knot on the top of the head, and there to fasten it with wooden or metal pin, as is often represented in the old pictures of the Ming dynasty. The art of hair cutting as practised in the West is as yet unknown to the Chinese barber. It is but rarely, therefore, that a foreigner calls in the aid of native skill. Only, indeed, when he assumes the garb of the country and goes into the interior does he find it necessary. This, indeed, ferms the coup de grdce to the foreigners metamorphosis. The "taiP' fastened on to the back hair deceives even the prac- tised eye of the native, and, as MT. Fortune has daily observed "even the dogs cease to notice him. ."-Ddrk Blue.