Comfort in a time of stress

Hair salon gives cancer patients a chance to look their best, Yuan Quan and Yin Pingping report.

Mo Hongying (a pseudonym) took off her maroon, shoulder-length bob wig and buried herself in a sofa. The middle-aged woman had come to the hair salon Shuting for help with her wig.

Looking exhausted, she did not rise until another woman sitting in front of a mirror, with curly dark red hair, began to have her hair cut.

Mo is bald.

"I used to have the same hairstyle as her," Mo mutters as she fished out her cellphone, searching for a photo of herself taken before she began her cancer treatment. "The length, color, curls … were all the same."

"For many women, it's a devastating blow to become bald. Some customers cry when having their head shaved, some keep their eyes closed the whole time, afraid to see themselves in the mirror, while others stare blankly into the mirror, lacking the courage to walk out of the shop," says Wang Feng, 58, owner of the salon located in an alley next to Beijing Cancer Hospital.

Apart from nearby residents, many of its customers like Mo are cancer patients who have lost hair due to chemotherapy and want to shave their heads before all their hair falls out on its own.

Mo bought her wig early this year to help make it through Chinese New Year. She did not want her octogenarian mother to know she had cancer.

"Cancer patients usually want a wig styled so it looks like their natural hair," says Wang. "They want to be recognized."

When Wang Xue, a hairdresser at Shuting, shaved the head of a cancer patient for the first time, her hands shook, and she "dared not speak, for fear of saying anything inappropriate that would hurt the patient", she says.

"Unlike my ordinary clients, they (cancer patients) seem physically and mentally vulnerable," she says.

Her boss Wang Feng once made a wig for a 10-year-old girl diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At the time, she was too weak to wear the wig herself. Nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy made the trim difficult. When Wang put a custom-made wig on the girl's head, another barber helped to keep her back straight while her mother propped up her chin.