Cut-and-dried

Changshengtang, or the "hall of longevity", is believed to be China's first and longest-running barber shop.

No matter how the shop's look has changed, Dai felt blessed to have inherited some of the shop's most valued traditions. They've kept a hairdressing log for regular costumers to ensure that dyeing and perming are maintained at appropriate intervals. They've also carried on their head massage tradition, believing that healthy hair is the basis of effective styling. Most importantly, they've inherited their predecessors' core techniques.

In the early years, Changshengtang was renowned for its "finger styling", meaning that with only their hands and a hair dryer, stylists were able to model the hair into different shapes such as chrysanthemums and clouds depending on what inspiration they had drawn from daily life.

Such skills require abundant training, says 76-year-old retired hairdresser Wu Ziwen, who started working at Changshengtang as a teenage apprentice. The training requires the stylists to bend their arms so that two cups full of water can be put on their elbows. During practice to improve the flexibility of their wrists and fingers, they have to make sure the cups stay in place and the water doesn't spill.

Though new equipment and tools now can do much of the work fingers once did, Wu says young apprentices at the shop are now still trained in the old-fashioned way and that's why they've attracted many return customers.

"Without solid basic skills, you can hardly ensure high quality," he says.

For example, he says that hair-perming devices in the old days were heated to a very high temperature to ensure the endurability of a hairdo, but the heat could damage your hair. Nowadays the heat is much milder, he says, so giving the hairdo endurance will largely depend on a stylist's finger technique.

"But the sad truth is, nowadays many young hairdressers don't have such basic training," Wu says.

That's why Wu's 25-year-old grandson Wu Cheng, like many other young stylists who've carried on their grandfathers' and fathers' torches at Changshengtang, has abandoned his job as a promising stylist in fancier hair salons to start from scratch at a place where customers are obviously older and teachers more strict.

In other hair salons, he says, it usually takes no more than two years for an apprentice to become a qualified stylist. But at Changshengtang, it takes between three to five years - and to be called a good stylist it takes at least eight years. That's not attractive to many young people, he says, but it's here that he can truly sharpen his skills.

"Before I came here, I would have said speed is the main thing I've pursued in my work. But now all I wonder is whether my work is precise enough," he says.

Contact the writer at hanbingbin@chinadaily.com.cn.