The man who waved at me has been cutting my hair for five years
His shop is located in the center of the county town, and sitting in his chair I can look down on the busiest intersection in the county. In recent years he occasionally tells me: there are far fewer people outside now; it wasn’t like this before.
He seems to have three daughters, the youngest just started middle school. The daughters never let him cut their hair; once he gave his youngest a fringe, apparently adding a bit of his paternal expectation into it, and almost cut the father‑daughter relationship.
His wife manages the accounts in the shop, handles the cash register, and her fingernails are always red. Her perm cycle is the same as my haircut cycle, so every time I see her in the shop the curls on her head are new, like someone has placed an uncooked bowl of instant noodles on her head.
Her hair isn’t done by him, because she believes that although he knows hair, he doesn’t understand her.
His mahjong skills aren’t great either; every month he does charity. He says his fellow players always call him “God of Wealth,” and they get excited when they see him. So he never says he loses money, he says he’s doing charity.
Later he stopped the charity because the shop’s business has been poor since last year. He and I calculated the weekly expenses for the three daughters and said that relying on haircuts alone would eventually not hold up. He says people seem to care less about looking good now.
The barbers in his shop have become fewer and fewer; in the past every corner had a brilliant head, now only numbers 3, 7, 12, and A‑Wei remain, the missing numbers being the barbers who left.
A‑Wei has no number because he’s his cousin. This kid doesn’t want to learn barbering; he often rinses customers while crouching in the grass playing “Angela.” His parents forced him into the barbershop hoping he could meet a girl there.
After the business declined, he investigated his competitors. The person who supplies towels to all the city’s barbershops told him: “Your shop’s towel usage is in the top three.”
That sentence kept him going for another two years. He changed the décor and implemented new management. After barber Li Xiaohua became popular, he tried online operations, but some things are inevitably different from before.
The afternoon before yesterday I received his message asking if I was free to come to the shop for a haircut. Over all these years he never reached out to me; it was always me who initiated contact. I wasn’t planning to get a haircut, but I sensed he was about to leave, and in life a trusted, relaxing barber may be harder to find than a lover.
I replied: “What a coincidence, I was just thinking of you.”
I walked into the shop and, as before, went to the rinsing station. He hurried over and slipped a towel into my collar. A‑Wei was still playing “Angela” in the chair. Neither of us said a word while the water ran.
One afternoon he once mentioned his past, saying he grew up in fields and by rivers as a child and always wanted to be a big boss. Later it seems he just took a long‑distance bus, fell asleep, got off, recognized the driver, and his hair has never been clean since.
He carefully cut my hair and talked about his recent life. I looked out the glass; five years have passed, the county town is still gray, the intersection always has people waiting for the green light. I thought, what a pity, this will be my last time sitting here.
After I paid and left, his wife’s head still looked like a bowl of instant noodles. I walked down to the street, turned back, and saw him waving at me from a higher spot.
The changes of era and the comings and goings of people in short county‑town literature always make one feel a bit melancholy, its hue is roughly like the vague childhood in memory.
“Change” in “Unchanging” touches the heartstrings.