Mr. Hot Stuff and Arctic boy have both been getting a little shaggy and their ears were disappearing. The challenge here in China is that the hair cutting salons are very “hands on”. Wash hair. Give you head massage. Give you arm massage. Give you leg massage. Cut hair. Wash hair. Style hair. Only $7 U.S. for new stylist.$14 for experienced stylist. Now take a 14 year old boy with a please-don’t-touch-me-one-of-us-might-have-cooties attitude and imagine his comfort level with this. Mr. Hot Stuff has a higher level of tolerance, but he doesn’t like it either.

Enter the back-alley barbershop. No wash hair, just cut. The barber chooses the style which will be very short. We decided our barber used to cut hair for Mao’s army. He had amazing scissor skills and he was fast. All this luxury and speed for less than $2 U.S. (The Chinese pay $1, but why quibble about it? We made the guy’s day.

Always remember the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut…

…about two weeks.

winner-winner, chicken dinner 🙂