Highlighting Hair….Again

About a year ago this time, I had my hair highlighted at a salon in Taian. It went fine. I had my own highlighting hair products brought from the States with me. I remember the young assistant gentleman tasked with pulling my hair through the cap, was mostly excited about the light plastic gloves included in the box. I had to stop him from putting them on while he was prepping my hair with the cap and save them until they were using the highlighting products. Anyway, it went well and was a reasonable price.

A fellow team member here in Beijing wanted to try a new hair salon opened a few blocks from our apartments. I went along to help translate. It went well, and in the conversation about her $3 haircut, I asked if he could highlight my hair. I didn’t know the words and pointed to someone who was having her hair dyed. He said, “Sure, $9.” I rushed home to get my over-the-counter highlighting kit. I brought it back and showed him the cap but also the tinfoil that I brought, because my hair is below shoulder length now and would be difficult to pull through a cap. I told him to go ahead and finish up some people who were waiting because I knew it would take a while to do my hair. I mixed up my products ready to go. We then attempted to discuss how to do highlighting. This was a new concept to him and he finally said, “No, I can’t.” Well, there was a Chinese girl there translating for another foreign friend and we enlisted her help. Finally, after some begging, we came to agreement and he started. He was being so meticulous about the process that after an hour’s work, only the back of my hair was done and really that would be about the time to take the products off my hair. I explained that we were in a time pinch….as best as I could. He then rushed through the first half of my front hair, ….and ran out of my product. So we used his dying products rather than the bleaching products from my kit. Well, we got done. I paid more than $9 for it, but still not outrageous. I have very white streaks in the back and blonde dye more fully covering in the front. There are some streaks of hair where there is color at the bottom, then no color in the middle and the blonde closer to my roots. OK. I can live with this. But just another example of communication issues gone amok. Good thing I don’t care that much. The hair cut was nice.