At the Cutting Edge of the City: Male Migrant Hairdressers in Shanghai

Abstract

This article examines the emerging service industry in Shanghai through the prism of young male migrant hairdressers and their even younger assistants. These “cosmopolitan” service workers are framed within Lisa Rofel's concept of “desiring China” in order to show how the service industry in Shanghai is a kind of “Goffmanian world”, in that the hairdresser must present and “sell” himself in particular ways on the “front-stage” of the market-driven service industry. By examining both the “impression management” and “emotional labour” of the hairdresser, I argue that not only are we able to observe China's opening up policy as it is embodied in the service worker, but we are also able to observe on the salon floor hierarchical and power labour relations at work and the emergence of a commodity-style subject. These young male migrant service workers are framed as a kind of complement, or extension, of the young female migrant industrial workers studied by Pun Ngai in her book Made in China. By comparing and contrasting the “Chinese working daughters” of the factory regime with the “Chinese working sons” of the service regime we are able to observe Shanghai's structural shift from an industrial production centre to a service-based world city.

Keywords:

• China
• Shanghai
• service industry
• hairdressing
• emotional labour
• cosmopolitanism
• commodification

Notes

1. Psychologist Oliver James refers to relative materialism – as opposed to “survival materialism” – as a form of materialistic behaviour over and above the consumption required to meet one’s fundamental practical needs. In short, and with reference to desiring China and the Party-State’s policy goal of producing a “xiaokang shehui” (moderately well-off society), people seeking relative materialism “want the money, possessions, appearances or fame in order to keep up with the Joneses ” (2008, p. 10).

2. All names have been changed to protect anonymity.

3. See Xiao Wu (The Pickpocket, 1997); Zhantai (Platform, 2000); Ren Xiao Yao (Unknown Pleasures, 2002); Shi Jie (The World, 2004); and San Xia Hao Ren (Still Life, 2006).

4. Three hairdressers at Baby Salon did not live in the apartment as each lived with his wife and child.

5. See Georges Canguilhem, 1992.

6. By emotional labour Hochschild means: “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; emotional labour is sold for a wage, and therefore has exchange value” (1983, p. 7).

7. This interaction took place on 23 August 2006.

8. Conversation between manager Ding and the author, 16 September 2006.

9. Comment to the author by Gaoshen, a 24 year-old male from Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, on 18 September 2006.

10. This incident occurred on 24 July 2006.

11. Despite meeting some of these girls, I generally had to judge for myself whether what the hairdressers told me was true. While some really did have more than one girlfriend at any given time and some had had sex with more than 30 different girls, we should also keep in mind both their ability to blow their own trumpets and the fact that research tends to demonstrate that people – when asked – may bend the truth when it comes to reporting on their sexual behaviour. For example, men tend to exaggerate while women tend to downplay their sexual “conquests”. See Halberstam, 1998.

12. This conversation took place on 7 July 2006.

13. Related to the author on 12 August 2006.

14. See Skinner, 1977.

15. For an analysis of the danwei system and its lingering effects see Bray, 2005.

16. See Vogel, 1965. As a follow-up to this study see Gold, 1985.

17. Related to the author on 27 August 2006.

18. Conversation between Liliang and the author, 19 July 2006.

19. Conversation between Xiaoying and the author, 25 July 2006.

20. Conversation between Guandao and the author, 22 July 2006.

21. This interaction occurred on 27 June 2006.

22. Conversation between Guandao and the author, 10 August 2006.

23. See McLuhan, 1994, p. 127.

24. Conversation between Guandao and the author, 15 July 2006.