Being a foreigner in China is living under constant surveillance. The one who is watching you has many eyes, many ears, and it remembers. It is not, however, “Big Brother”, nor the government, the police or any other law-enforcing agency. Being a foreigner in China is being watched, observed and noted by no other than the general population.

The basic trait of living in a big city - anonymity - melts away when you are in a place like this. Until recently you were just a someone, now you are The Foreigner. Obviously, in the small places who have hardly ever encountered any foreigners before, people would stop and stare. But what never ceases to amazes me is how even in the biggest cities, cities in which foreigners are not a rare sight, we are noted. Not stared at, no; reactions would seem to be normal, people will typically just keep on walking by without sparing a second glance. If you stop and check closely, however, you will find that you have left a mark.

This manifests itself in fullest when it comes to shops. If you come to a shop a second time, even when a long time (several weeks) has passed since the first time, you would often be remembered by the employees. Personal examples abound: A month and a half after I opened a cellular-phone account, I came back to the service center - and the service lady immediately brought up my account details on the computer, before I had a chance to tell her anything. I went to a foot-massage place for a second time, after almost a month, and the massagist (not the same one I had the first time) not only remembered that I had been there before but had also remembered when and where I had sat the previous time. I stepped into a grocery store and the shopkeeper guessed what drink I want to buy before I had a chance to ask for it.

Wherever you go, your passage is secretly marked. Whatever you do, your actions are secretly noted. A foreigner in China need only visit a place twice in order to become a Regular.

When passing past hairdressers in China, I’ve often seen prices printed on the front. The list of services would usually begin in the manner:

• Wash, blow
• Wash, cut, blow
• Curl…

And so on. I had always discarded, in my mind, the “wash blow” part. Who, I thought, would go to a barbershop just to wash their hair? True, I know some Israelis (girls, one and all) who would go to the hairdresser to wash and blow their hair, but this is usually a rare thing done before a big event. It seemed strange to me, then, that this service would almost always be the first one offered by hairdressers.

Those of you who have been reading my posts from the start, may recall this post in which I describe foot massages （and a broken heart of a massagist). Foot massages have many names in China, but surprisingly the most common term in Chinese for having a foot massage is “washing feet”. While the So if “washing feet” means a foot massage, what would “washing hair” mean?

And, indeed, “washing hair” in a Chinese barbershop is not the same ordeal as the simple washing I was used to from the hairdressers back at home. While it does include shampooing and rinsing, it also includes a long scalp massage (with shampoo, of course), neck massage, shoulder massage and occasionally even massaging the arms. The whole process takes around fourty-five minutes, and that’s before they’ve started cutting your hair. Indeed, the Chinese take their hair-washing seriously.

Hairdresser shops are common in China. Like many businesses here, each one looks for ways to outdo the others and attract more customers. For example, some hairdressers will have flat TV screens set in front of the customers, so that they can watch TV (Chinese really like TV) while having their hair washed/cut. In others, you can choose whether you want to your hair to be washed “Chinese style” or “Thai style” (the style, of course, referring to the massage technique). And even for children, some places will go out of their way to make the little guys enjoy their time at the barbershop and want to come back: