History 1 Barbers in My Life by Lim Cheng Ean

Manchu cut My first barber was a tall and leanish Chinese by the name of Ah Kee.  He was employed by my father as a full time barber, and his only job was shaving all day long the front portion of the heads of the numerous Chinese employees who helped my father in his conjoint business of milling and selling rice.  As a boy of 8 or 9  which would be about 70 years before the year in which this is being written, I began to see Ah Kee daily engaged in this occupation. I also used to see him sharpening his razor on a whetting stone after each shave, for he possessed only one razor. The razor had to be very sharp, as the hair an that part of their  heads was tough, due to the monthly shaves to which they were subjected ever since the age of 3 or 4. Ah Kee did not shave the back portion of their heads, because that was where their hair was allowed to grow long, so that it could be plaited into a queue or pigtail to hang down their spine and most men's pigtails were as long and straight as their spines. The pigtail was the Manchu style of hairdo for men. The Manchus imposed it on the Chinese when they conquered China in 1664. The Chinese revolution that did away with the Manchus and their pigtail had not come yet in Ah Kee's time.  It was still about 20 years away. Though only 8  or 9 years old I too had quite a longish a queue, and so once a month I would submit to Ah Kee's razor and patiently bear the resulting pain. To shave off hair that had been allowed to grow for a month was not a pleasant affair at all, notwithstanding a pre-shaving sprinkling of water, and the .sharpening of the razor on the  whetting stone. However luckily for me there was a counter-balancing pleasure to offset this painful monthly shave; for Ah Kee  had a wife, who told us Siamese legendary stories after every shave.

A Siamese tale Only one of them I can now remember. It concerned a public contest for the Siamese King's daughter in marriage. The victor was a young ambitious man from a far-off province. With the magical power given him in answer to his prayers he was able to make two butting rocks that barred the contestants' path stop butting, and to start butting again immediately after he had gone through, so that the others could not get through. When later on he came to a stream, where there was no boat to be seen,  with this power he called up a turtle to take him across. When he reached the palace, he had to find the room where the princess was and this wasn't easy because it was in a row of rooms all looking alike  in every detail, door knobs included. Again he resorted to the magic of the power and a golden fly came and settled on the knob of the door of the princess's room.  How often have I not wished for such a power when faced with problems! My next barber was a Filipino who played the flute, piccolo  and clarinet as a member of the then George Town Municipal Band.   I knew him quite well, as he was my tutor in respect of  these three musical instruments, to which I was assigned by the master of our school band. When I found on my visits to his house that this musician also cropped and trimmed his young son's head of hair in the European style, I requested him to come to my house to cut off my queue and similarly crop and trim my hair, which he did with the help of much pomade. My eldest sister cried when she saw him cut off with a pair of scissors the queue that she had so long been in the habit of combing and dressing every morning; and I too felt a poignant sense of loss; but it could not be helped, as it was time for me to go to England to study law and to discard that curiosity provoking appendage. After arriving in England in the autumn of 1910,  I frequented barber establishments once a month for a haircut  which then cost six pence.  I was sure my English barber must have felt that that charge was a bit too low in my case, for my stumpy jet black hair was tougher and harder to cut than the soft flaxen hair of the English. To compensate him for the extra labour I. had to tell him that I once wore a queue and had the front part of my head shaved once a month. He was more than amused   In Paris to which I later went to polish up the French I had learnt at school, I .found. that my French barber did not stand up all the time like his English counterpart; for when he came to deal with the back part of my head, he sat on a high stool to do his work.  I could see him clearly, as there was a mirror on the wall in front of me,  and there was a similar mirror too behind him;  in fact the walls on his side and mine were hidden by huge mirrors.  Mirrors indeed were a part of French life; for they were to be seen almost everywhere. They decorated the drawing rooms of  ancient palaces, and the walls alongside stairways in theatres had life-sized mirrors in which patrons could examine their appearance and attire.  I think it is this factor more than anything else that has produced a race so particular about personal appearance and attire.  If their women are more chic than others, isn't  due to the omnipresence of their oversized mirrors?  But in the United Kingdom and the United States of America the only public mirrors that I found were little ones in such smelly places as public lavatories and rest-rooms hung up so high that you had to stand on a stool to see anything below your neck.

The Japanese barber In Oklahoma City in 1961 I paid $1.75 (U.S.) for a haircut that was timed to last between 12 and 15 minutes and not one minute longer.  In addition there was a 25 cent tip to buy civility for the next haircut.  My grandsons born and bred there were better off, as their mother paid only $1 for each of them, while they each received a candy from their barber to ensure future patronage. David, the youngest of the grandsons practised the satyagraha I taught him by  resolutely refusing the candy. In San Francisco in 1962 a Japanese barber charged me $2 and apologised for General Yamashita's acts of savagery to the people of Singapore  when I told him that I case from there.  It would not have been any good telling him I came from Penang, for he might have mistaken it for Peking.  On one occasion I found him speaking in English to a Japanese client.   I asked him the reason why he did not speak in Japanese alter his client had departed; and he said that that language was difficult in that you had to be careful how you addressed people, whereas the English "you" was acceptable when addressing anyone, whatever his rank or title might be. Roberto was a Filipino barber in Berkeley in the latter part of 1962. When he raised his charge from $1.75 to $2.50 I asked him thee reason for it and he said it was because he had joined a union; so I went to an Italian who charged me $1.75, because he was not unionised, and was free to exhibit in-the window of his parlour a tariff of his charges And now at the time of writing this, which happens to be towards the end of 1968, I pay $2 (Malaysian) (2/3 U.S.) to a barber in Penang for a haircut plus a shave plus a shampoo plus trimming the hairs in my nose, which all together takes an hour, which makes me so relaxed that I sometimes fall asleep in my chair. #

The Penang Story is a project organised by the Penang Heritage Trust in collaboration with Star Publications with the aim of assisting Penang and Malacca's joint listing in the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations's World Heritage list. The project is sponsored by the Japan Foundation, ABN-AMRO Bank and the Penang Government with the City Bayview as the official hotel.  The Penang Story tells of the peoples of  Penang and can be found at www.penangstory.net

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_____________________ The Penang File Issue 24