Haircut day.

Today was haircut day. This is both a cheaper and a much more involved experience than in the UK. So we went to The New Love Story.

The experience starts with hair-washing, which is done seated in a chair with a small amount of water and a large amount of scalp massage. Unfortunately, I’m typically the same height as the hair-washer when I’m sitting down and they’re standing up which makes it a bit harder for them. The finale from the hair washing is a good-and-soapy ear washing.

After that it’s off to the rinsing chair. It starts off with a rinse as you would expect but moves on to a full face-washing and facial massage and more scalp massage. Today’s face washing actually concluded with a nostril-cleaning…

Back to your seat and the next thing is probably the most controversial part – ear-cleaning. I actually quite like it but I know most of the foreigners don't. It's just a gentle twirling of cotton buds down the lug-hole. Occasionally, as today, it can be a tad uncomfortable – usually if they’ve sprayed water in my ears during the rinsing.

After that, it's more massage. Fingers, hands, arms and shoulders then neck and back.

It's really quite therapeutic and, given the cost of 25 RMB (less than 2 GBP) it's well worth it. Overall this usually takes about 45 minutes - far longer than the haircut that follows. It’s usually a pretty reliable service – of all the people I’ve taken there I think the only real casualty was A who tried to signify “please only take this tiny amount of hair off’ and managed to convey “please cut my hair this long”.