Why, No, Red-Black is Not My Natural Hair Colour: How to Try to Look Half Decent in China
I’m a rather low-maintenance kind of gal, generally. It takes me about two minutes to get ready for going to work, maybe five for going out.
In Turkey, I succumbed temporarily to the subtle yet persistent societal pressure and for a while ringed my eyes with black pencil, brushed on mascara, owned three different colours of lipstick, and wore foundation and powder more than once every few weeks.
I used to go to the güzellik salonu every month with my immaculately groomed Turkish lady friends to have every stray hair above my neck either waxed or threaded off with Hair Cutting Scissors USA (they wanted me to get everything everywhere torn painfully off, as it is the custom to be toddleresque, but I declined, for six persistent years).
I grew to enjoy having beautifully arched eyebrows that made me look (if you squinted enough) vaguely like a 1940s Hollywood film star. I got really elegant, girly haircuts and have been enhancing my beauty using natural anti-aging cream. I even wore heels sometimes- admittedly clunky big heels with knee-high rainbow striped socks, but heels never the less. And I’m someone who spent most of my 20s in Doc Martens, jeans and vaguely-styled hair (aka combed). However, my Turkish elegance was impermanent, and not wholly by choice.
Here in China, I’m too tall and too wide to buy clothes. My feet are monstrously huge. My skin tone doesn’t match the make up that’s for sale here– at least not the kind I’m willing or able to afford. I have a very hard time explaining to hair dressers exactly what I want, so I tend to avoid getting my hair cut until it can’t be put off any longer, and use Vegan loc products instead; and as a result it is often straw-like and shapeless. Don’t even get me started on what the toxic tap water does to it or my skin.
When we first arrived here in Shanghai in early 2009, I tried getting my eyebrows shaped at a local salon and the girl pulled out an enormous straight razor and proceeded to do a surprisingly good job. However, I really didn’t like having an enormous unsheathed super-sharp blade so close to my eyes and I ended up with rather awkward eyebrow stubble within days due to them having been shaved rather than waxed or threaded or plucked.
A year passed before I worked up the courage to go to Browhaus, a chain that deals with the removal of (and pencilling in) of any inconsistent body/facial hair. I had heard rumor that they did threading. I love threading. There’s something thrilling about having an esthetician bent over you with a loop of thread pulled between her fingers and her teeth like an elaborate flossing attempt, methodically creating lovely arches in your brows while you lie back in an awkwardly angled chair with your fingers holding your eyelids shut. Browhaus did my brows but in a distinctly local fashion: thick and slab-like, with no discernable arch. Like slightly thinner caterpillars, hovering heavily over my eyelids.
After that, I gave up on salons for keeping my face half-presentable.
One thing I’ve done consistently for the past several decades, however, has been to colour my hair. My normal hair colour isn’t bad. It’s brown. Not exactly exciting. I quite like changing colours, though, depending on my moods. I’ve been blond with a near buzzcut. I’ve had coal black 1920s bobs. I’ve had funky little purple spikes. I’ve had long, straight red hair with 1965 bangs. Especially when living in big, grim, colourless cities, having colour in my hair makes me feel less grim. And Shanghai is frequently grim. Brown simply will not suffice.
I initially tried getting my hair coloured in a salon. In fact, in the photo you see just above, you can see the dye job I got at the same time as they razored my poor brows and chopped my hair up into an odd Mrs Brady mullet. I never went back, however, since they left the dye on so long that my hair nearly melted. Apparently Chinese hair isn’t the same as western hair. They were adamant that we leave it in for an hour, even though I could feel my scalp burning and my roots snapping. It ended up looking like a weirdly muted, very fragile auburn, which is not at all what I’d wanted.
So I’ve been doing my own for two years now. Less burny. However, it has its own drawbacks.
For one, the range of colours available in, say, Watson’s, is a bit limited. You can choose between red-black, black-black, purple-black, blue-black and a few other permutations of black.
My hair, as you know, is not black or super black. No matter which colour I use, the results tend to be the same: quite dark with reddish highlights. Like a very dark red wine. Not sure if I’d say it’s ‘intriguing red black’ like the box insists but hey, what the hell.
Let me show you what you need to dye your hair in China.
First of all, it really helps to know approximately what to do beforehand as the instructions are 100% in Chinese. I’ve done my own hair so many times in so many languages that I know the steps and the timing by heart. Hopefully the Chinese directions are not different, though I’ve not noticed any adverse effects so far.
Secondly, Chinese dye kits come awesomely equipped. Look at Gerald the Bear modelling all the protective gear that come in the box. And since it’s the eastern part of the world we’ve been talking about, you might want to go kawaii and blend in with the background with some decent style tips.
As you can see on Gerald, there’s a cute little plastic poncho that goes over your head and protects your clothes from dye spatters. You also get the usual plastic gloves. However, most unexpectedly, you also get little elasticated ear covers (unfortunately not bear-sized so they didn’t quite cover Gerald’s ears). Ear covers! How awesome is that? No more blotchy purple ears to spoil the joy of newly dyed hair!
I’m not going to post any follow up photos until I can get my hair cut again, as it’s rather dire these days. You can rest assured, however, that the colour is a most excellent deep, dark burgundy, which cuts a swathe of brilliance through the grimness of a Shanghai day.
ETA (29 Sept): I finally braved my Mac’s PhotoBooth and took a picture of the new colour when on the train to Nanjing yesterday to do the first 2 workshops for my new part time gig as the British Council’s Language Expert (yep, thet’s me, shore is, uh huh). I still totally need a hair cut. It’s getting out of control, I tell you.
As with many of your other posts, this describes my life of the past 10 years. I first discovered purply-black haircolor in France, and since then it’s always been some combination of purple-brown-mahogany-black.
PS: Your bear is really a fetching model too.
Elizabeth recently posted..Dear Thailand
I think my favourite colour has been Feria’s Chocolate Cherry but I can’t get it in China. Devastating!
Gerald’s awesome, isn’t he? I should get him a modelling agent…
I can relate! I colored my own hair (as I always do) during our RTW but never had any trouble until Vietnam. I chose the color as close to the normal dark brown I always choose and proceeded to apply the color in the teeny tiny bathroom. 40 minutes later I wash it all out and look in the mirror to see my hair is BLACK. Black, black, black! Vietnamese beauty black – not at all like west coast Canadian girl brown. Black. A little bit of black lipstick and I would have looked like a goth! And it took forever to grow out – that’s right it was kind of sticky and thick and didn’t fade like normal color – it had to grow out. I got used to it though and now color my hair darker than I used to – and I love the story!! Cheers!
Gillian @OneGiantStep recently posted..Ten Must See Deserts
I went through an interesting few years in my early-mid 20s in the UK where I was experimenting with all the black-hued dyes and kind of fell for a deep blue black that looked beautiful in certain lights (but which needed very specific hair cuts (short swingy Vidal Sassoon’y bob) to not overwhelm my face and skin tone. I don’t think I’d ever have dared to do that back home. The most I allowed myself to do while growing up on Vancouver Island was some red henna (natural! not too crazy!). I can’t believe I was so hesitant…
“which cuts a swathe of brilliance through the grimness of a Shanghai day.” Love it.
Camden Luxford recently posted..Adjusting to Life as an Expat: Interviews and Resources
And it does, truly!
I dyed my hair that exact same color in 2007! I did it at a salon in Shenzhen to mark the beginning of a solo backpacking trip and a new year. I loved it for the first few weeks, but soon it faded to a less fun shade of orange. And then later, when I got a more “professional” job and decided to turn it back to my natural brown, the Chinese salons in Shanghai did not have the tools needed to make me look normal again. So it was black. And then not that many weeks later, a not-fun shade of orangy-brown with roots. Many months later when I returned to San Francisco, I paid too much to a high-end stylist to make me a brunette again. And I haven’t dyed it since.
Great post. Congrats on figuring out how to make your hair work for you 🙂
Leslie Forman recently posted..Why is Sebástian Piñera, the President of Chile, so unpopular?
Oooooh, faded orange hair! Mine’s been fine with this one for the past few years of dying it at home, maybe because my natural hair colour is darker to begin with. When I got that brutal dye job at the salon, they freaking BLEACHED my hair first (because, I guess, their Chinese clients require it to get colour to show up on black) and so although I’d asked for a more red shade, I ended up with auburn, which soon faded to even lighter auburn. Not a good one for me! I’ve never paid a salon in a developed country to do my hair colour as I can’t help thinking that, say, $100 is just absurd to spend on hair that will grow out in a month.
Have you checked out the Vidal Sassoon hair schools in Shanghai? There’s on in Xintiandi and one at Hongfang. I went once and got a haircut and dye job for free with the students. And the teachers are all Vidal Sassoon professional hair stylists from all over the world (I got one who went to school in California). Plus, the front desk and some of the teachers speak some English. The only downside is that cuts/dyes take about 3 hours each, but if you have a free day it’s pretty awesome.
Just my two cents. I’m obsessed with hair and dying my hair (it’s been every color under the rainbow by now).
No, I hadn’t checked them out- didn’t even know about them! That’s a good idea. Do they have access to non-Chinese dyes? I was told that one of the reasons why the dyes here (both the home-dye kits and in salons) are so harsh on my hair is that they’re chemically designed for Chinese hair which is harder for the dye to penetrate. Thicker strands or something.
And yeah, hair dying is fabulous. I think I’d go nuts if I couldn’t change my colour whenever the whim struck.
I think they use the same dye as the schools in Britain and the US, but I can’t be sure. I have Chinese hair so I need some pretty tough bleach for anything to be done. But I’m sure that if they see you they’d know not to use the stronger dye. From what I could gather when the teachers were explaining what colors/bleach to mix, they include percentages and concentrations depending on the hair type and the color you want. I’d really recommend the hair school; the students and teachers are all really nice and friendly, especially the ones doing color.
It’s sad now that my current job doesn’t let me dye my hair anymore. I’m in the process of growing it out back to boring black.
Pity you can’t dye it now. Not even something minor, like the red-black or blue black or purple black? It’s a great pleasure in life!
I really need to dye my hair as I’m going very grey & it’s really not doing much for my self confidence. Plus, hanging out with 20-year-olds all day already makes me feel old — I don’t need my hair to make me feel old too! I’ve been too afraid to go to the salon (and too lazy to find one that speaks English in Wuxi) and too afraid to do it at home (I’ve only dyed my hair a few times on my own, so I don’t think I could brave the Chinese instructions). Maybe I can hire you & Gerald to do it the next time we’re together. I pay in cookies. 🙂
Sally recently posted..On What 9-11 Taught Me About Home
I’m sure Gerald and I could do a decent job. I mean, if I can do it myself in my bathroom and not totally mess up then I think I might be able to do yours! Pick a colour, any colour, and come on over!
PS I’m older than you still so you at least have that!
Oh hey! I’m here! I’m alive!
Like Sally, I’m going super grey, but I figure at this point once I start dying my hair, I’m doomed to have to dye it forever, and that is just not an effort I’m willing to put into my looks. Also, getting a haircut in an Asian country is a distinctly stressful thing, even in a place like Bangkok, where there were plenty of people trained to do Western hair. I was just never sure…
You… do I know you? Hmmmm….. Long time no see! Good to see you back here!
You know, you could still dye your hair and not fret about the grow out. I’ve had the halo effect many times (including very short bleached blond hair growing out, which was a distinctly odd effect, with a circle of brown followed by spikes of blond…). I usually have at least a few cm of grow-out at any given time because I’m so very, very lazy.
Hair dressers here (except the House of Razors and Mullets) are actually perfect for my hair and all my cuts (even the mullet, if styled right) have been brilliant. I have lots of super fine straight hair and, as it turns out, it is totally suited to those adorable Japanese/Chinese cutesy layered cuts. I just grab a Japanese hair mag and point at something feasible. Super cheap too. And you get a head and shoulder massage!