Don't touch my hair (UK)

BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour today touched upon hair discrimination: people with Afro hair having people touching (without consent) and making all sorts of (mostly negative) comments about their hair.  The word “micro-aggression” is mentioned in association with this.

This calls to mind my own experience with older Chinese women in my younger days on two occasions.

The first happened when I was 25 years old — young to a Chinese woman in her 50s, as I’d be her daughter’s age.  It was my first interpreting assignment up in Accrington (in the Manchester area of England for those who don’t know the geography).  

The delegation of four had come over on a training course, learning how to take apart textile machinery and make minor repairs.  Their factory near Shanghai had bought a consignment of textile machines from a factory in Accrington.  They wanted to learn how to do the minor repairs themselves rather than wait for the British engineer to fly out, although it was in their contract, because it’d be precious down time for them while waiting for the engineer to get his visa and plane ticket.

Madam Shi was a bit of an outlier.  She was the only woman in the group.  She was the head of the factory, with the other three being the engineers, so she was their boss, although post-1949 mainland Chinese are very good about being egalitarian in their treatment of people below them.  

It was also her first time abroad (this was 1979 when the Chinese didn’t get to go abroad much, if at all).  She was in a Western country (culturally different), and didn’t speak any English at all.  So it was natural that she should take to me, especially since I’d be her daughter’s age.  Whenever I spoke to her or the delegation as a group, this lady would stroke my hair, or move or re-arrange stray strands of hair — off my forehead, off my shoulders, to the back of my head.

The second time, I was at an exhibition of old photographs of the first Chinatowns in Britain (in Liverpool and London).  It was hosted by the Xinhua News Agency (New China News Agency, China’s official news agency).  I was in my late 20s, still young in the eyes of a Chinese person in his/her 50s.  A woman in her 50s from Xinhua came up to me, the only other Chinese person at the exhibition at the time, and started to ask me where I was from, what I was doing in the UK, whether I was married, etc.  While she was conducting this conversation with me, she was, like the textile delegation lady, re-arranging my hair at the same time.

Although I didn’t like being touched, especially by a total stranger, I was only irritated on both occasions about the invasion of privacy, nothing as strong as feeling insulted, offended, outraged.  This is because in the Chinese culture, this hair touching is a show of affection for a younger person who could’ve been their daughter.  (It’s not done by older men to younger men, nor by older women to younger men — it’s a strictly woman-to-woman thing).  When they’re both in a Western country,  it is also a gesture of camaraderie between Chinese people in a foreign land.  And, of course, camaraderie between women as well.

(UK, 1979 and early 1980s)