The Chinese snip: Hanging on to a fading tradition

On a busy weekday noon, dressed in a summery outfit, Annie Chen’s soft and swift fingers are busy working the scissors through a 13-year-old client’s tresses at her crowded beauty salon in Marine Lines.

Annie moved to Mumbai from Kolkata when she was six. For her, like most Chinese women her generation, becoming a beautician was an obvious choice. “I inherited the acumen of the hairdressing business from my mother who ran a beauty parlour in Walkeshwar. But, my daughter is least interested in continuing the tradition,” says Chen, who is supportive of her daughter’s decision.

The once famed Chinese beauty parlours, blindly trusted for their sleek haircuts and those perfectly arched eyebrows, are falling behind in popularity, and their numbers are dwindling. One of the many reasons for this shrinking figure is that the current crop of young Chinese women are opting for other careers rather than taking over their mothers’ established businesses. “There may be 50 Chinese beauty parlours in the city and suburbs, down from 70 in the last decade,” says Chen.

Migration of many city-based Chinese families to countries like Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, coupled with the mushrooming of high-end salons, have further pushed the quaint Chinese parlours to the periphery. Forty years ago, George Bhang’s grandfather started the Bhang beauty parlour in Colaba. It now also sells shoes, showpieces and two-minute photographs.

“After the 1962 war, many Chinese migrated out of India and many continue to do so. Once the family moves, the parlours have to shut shop too,” says George.

Lorna, owner of the Lorna’s Chinese Beauty Parlour at Lokhandwala, Andheri says that in the 1970s, there was a surge of Chinese salons in the city. She, like others, moved from Kolkata to Mumbai and opened up her own place in 1992 after having worked in a famous Chinese salon on Park Street, Kolkata.

“In those days, Chinese beauticians were respected for their skills. They weren’t professionally qualified but they were simply good at it,” says Lorna, who counts Amrita Singh and Tisca Chopra among her loyal clients.

Chen believes that with time, the Chinese lost out because they didn’t’ make any attempts to market their brand or build on it. “Chinese are very secretive. They are not open to change,” says Chen, whose parlour does not wear the traditional knick-knacks that defines the identity of Chinese salons in the country.
 While earlier you could tell a Chinese parlour from its name, Agnes Chen’s five-year-old Butterfly Pond at Woodhouse Road was consciously given a “non Chinese” name.

“I was conscious of starting a brand and not just another Chinese beauty parlour,” says Agnes, co-owner of Butterfly Pond, who has also worked in the hospitality sector and with several multinationals before. “I didn’t inherit the parlour. In our culture, our mothers do the hairdressing. So, it comes naturally to us,” she adds. The unisex salon sports a contemporary look with a dash of traditional Chinese thrown in, like laughing Buddha statues and Chinese scrolls gifted by Agnes’s in-laws.

But, Agnes does say that the younger Chinese women who are into the business are more enterprising than their ancestors. “An older Chinese woman would typically like to open the shutters of her shop and shut it at the end of the day herself, while single-handedly maintaining the accounts. What is required is a bit more flexibility and openness in the running of a successful business in this competitive age,” says Agnes.

Maybe that is why Agnes can easily take her clients to the neighbouring salon for a blow dry, if there is no electricity at her parlour.  “We need to maintain camaraderie to stand the test of time.”