Der chinesische Dandy distinguiert sich durch seine Frisur. Dies galt zumindest 1864, wie im Continental Monthly nachzulesen ist.
»After eating, we must rank shaving as the second among Chinese employments. They all wear the cue, even to the infant in arms, whose mother shaves its head at three months old, and ties up the tiny cue with a red ribbon, and from that day to the day of his death the child and man must be periodically shaved; for, of course, no man can shave his own head.
Great is the barber in China, and vast his field of operations among four hundred millions of people! They shave their subjects everywhere, even sitting on a stone in an open field, and at all hours of the day their shops are full. It is in the neatness of his ‘shave’ and the glossiness of his rich black cue that the Chinese dandy is distinguishable.
Men who cannot afford to shave every day, allow the hair to grow until the head (always excepting the part which has never known the razor or the shears) resembles that of a fire zouave just after enlistment, or a penitentiary prisoner; while the exquisite has his head shaved with the sharpest razor, giving a bluish cast or frame for his yellow face. Occasionally the size or thickness of the tail appears to be unsatisfactory, and a larger surface is spared from the knife. The refractory hairs growing out in this supplementary patch surround the genuine cue with a halo an inch or two in height. Lots of these apostolical-looking Chinese are to be met with in every street, and, as they rarely wear hats, they have a very comical appearance.
This question of hats is another of curious import among this curious people. A Chinese gentleman rarely wears one in the streets, his mode of travel being in a sedan, and his fan or umbrella answering all purposes of protection from the sun.
A mandarin, on the contrary, wears in the ball of his cap his badge of office, and the time even when he changes his winter for his summer hat is regulated by the Board of Rites. The poor coolie is troubled by no such formality, and wears a great umbrella-like head covering, that he perches on a little bamboo tower, six inches above his crown, tying down the whole concern by a string that passes behind his ears. When at leisure, he wears his long cue trailing to his feet; when busy, it is snugly coiled around his head and out of sight under his hat.
The gentleman and mandarin, on the contrary, never ties up the cue, its flowing grace, like his long finger nails, being a badge of his superior condition in being above manual labor. No wonder, then, that they attach so much importance to the pigtail, and that the man who dresses it daily is so useful a character in the community.
His tools are unlike anything a civilized barber uses, and his razor, if its uses were not explained, would hardly be recognized by the name. It is a thick, broad instrument, shaped more like a cook’s cleaver than any instrument known to other nations; but it does its work well in the hands of a good operator. After the head is shaved, it is washed with warm water in an old-fashioned brass barber’s basin, such, as was in use in England two hundred years ago, and, after having had the few straggling hairs on lip and chin removed, the patient (for truly he deserves the name) goes through the torture of having all stray hairs extracted from the inner coating of the nose and ears, an absurd and barbarous custom that often leads to permanent injury of the latter organs. If he chances to have ophthalmia, the barber considers that his eyes need cleaning, and proceeds to wipe out the inner side of the eyelid with his instrument, of course to their serious injury. In the ophthalmic hospitals of Chinese cities European physicians have found this practice a fruitful cause of many diseases of the eyes, but no remonstrances can induce the people and their barbers to give it up.«