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August 28, 2016

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Home » Sunday » Now and Then

A snip of Shanghai salon history

A black-and-white barber pole spinning quietly on downtown Nanchang Road seems quaint next to the dazzling decorations and loud music that advertise salons around the city.

Apart from some photos of classic hair models, the window is highlighted by a list of hair-dressers with titles like “national-level technician.”

The shop bears the name Hujiang, a reference to one of Shanghai’s most famous salons. Back in the 1950s, the original Hujiang Barber Shop was popular among movie stars and celebrities. During the late-1980s and early-1990s, when ordinary residents could also afford such services, the barber shop often had a queue of customers stretching from Huaihai Road to Maoming Road.

“There were so many customers, so that we could only let 10 of them in each time,” says a senior barber who witnessed the golden age of the shop.

The history of Hujiang can be traced back to 1946, when barber Cai Wanjiang from Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, opened his first Hujiang Barber Shop on South Maoming Road, next to the Jinjiang Hotel. The shop gained great popularity among celebrities for its high-quality service. It later moved to Huaihai Road, where it became one of the “four famous Bund barber shops” — the others being Nanjing, Hua’an and Xinxin.

Shi Jiayue, a 66-year-old customer of the new Hujiang, said she’s known Hujiang since childhood as a place where celebrities had their hair done. Though she started to have her hair dressed at barber shops like many other Shanghai residents in the 1980s, Shi didn’t enter Hujiang until 1998. “I was nervous when entering Hujiang for the first time,” said Shi. Hujiang at that time had over 200 square meters of shop space. The first floor was for male customers, while the second was for ladies.

“The barbers at Hujiang had great skills. They designed hair styles according to your conditions and requests. The particular style I liked could hardly have been achieved at other ordinary barber shops,” said Shi. Regardless of the relatively high price, Shi became a loyal customer.

As other hair-dressing salons started popping up in the late 1990s, Hujiang gradually lost young customers pursuing more “fashionable” styles.

In 2001, the original Hujiang closed. According to some of the barbers, the shop was still making money at that time. Yet the profit from running the shop was less than what could be earned from simply renting out the space.

Some barbers set up their own shops using the Hujiang name, including Chen Guoliang, who set up the shop at Nanchang Road. This is the closest location to the original shop and employs several of its original team members. It also retains many of its namesake’s other traditional services, such as face-shaving, shoulder massage and even shoe-shinning.




 

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