Going to the hairdresser's is not normally something you fear. You may feel nervous if you're planning is to get a hair makeover but that's it. I was truly scared. It all started with my desperate need of re-touching my colour (I'm a natural dark blond but have had light blond highlights for a good few years now). I kind of new that blond highlights are probably not the most desired look here in China so the hairdresser might not be VERY familiar with the technique but I certainly did not expect the(supposedly)best hairdresser in town to not know anything about it!I had my OH with me, who,bless him, tried his best to describe what I was after...
Everything seemed ok until they started colouring my hair...To my horror, there was no mirror where I could actually see what was happening to my hair!I had it washed, dried...then coloured again!Washed, dried...still not good!Oh dear, this is not going well...After 3 hours I was nowhere near done.My OH managed to meet a friend, go for a meal, buy some snacks and come back to the salon, where I was still being experimented on!The hairdresser was very nice and reassuring so it's not like he was some hair-Frankenstein!The problem was that the usual blond dye they use on Chinese women, did not affect my hair at all so they kept trying different dyes, which could give the effect that I wanted. Unbelievable 5 HOURS LATER, starving,exhausted, feeling hopeless, with my hair dyed, washed, and dried 4 times, I finally left the salon. Unsurprisingly, I was the last customer..My hair ended up being 3 different shades of blond-silver on the sides, yellow-ish on top and a nice,sunny blond on the rest(highlights proved to complicated a task so I desperately opted for full head-colouring). You can only imagine how worried I was about the condition my locks would be in after undergoing such extreme treatment..The moral of this story is: if you have blond highlights or dye your hair blond and you need it done in China, don't go to a local hairdresser however good he may be; spend a bit more and go to one trained in Caucasian hair...or wait until you travel back home:)