BBC: Chinese wigs are mostly in the world but not labeled "Made in China"

wig

The reference news network reported on November 19 that the British media said that China is a veritable wig world factory, but why are there few "Made in China" labels? What is the secret of hair moving from one person's head to another?

According to the BBC website on November 14th, online search for wigs, hair extensions, and immediate dazzling choices on the screen: Peru, Brazil "luxury" virgin hair, "pure" Mongolian hair, India "the best Remy hair" Exquisite European braiding... However, there are very few Chinese products, although most wigs and hair extensions are from China.

Tarot, a professor of anthropology who wrote "The Tangle: The Secret Life of Hair," spent three years trying to figure out where the hair that people fell and cut was finally gone. She found that China is the largest exporter and importer of human rights, and China has also harvested a lot of real hair from the Chinese themselves.

She said: "People who work in this line know that 'Made in China' is seen as a negative label, so they switch to a more attractive marketing approach."

According to reports, a large number of online hair data show that Chinese hair is the thickest and hardest, Filipino hair is similar but more lustrous, Brazilian hair is "elastic", Indian hair "uses a wide range, has a natural luster."

The high end of the market is the so-called "virgin" hair, that is, the hair that has never been subjected to any chemical treatment, and the "Remy" hair, that is, the hair that is cut and shaved directly from the human head. The low end is the so-called "standard" hair, the word is usually the marketing term of "comb waste", whether it is made in China, those beautiful and elegant wig hair extensions, most of the origins are serve - from the comb, the water hole Collected waste. Tarot said that Chinese factories often refer to comb waste as "standard hair" because most hairs are collected in this way.

According to the report, from the marketing point of view, how to identify which hair is used in the wig is depends on the quality of the traders in the entire product chain. There are many mislabeling phenomena, but the person who buys the hair Usually no doubts are raised, as are the customers in the salon. But people are often reluctant to be bothered by the "ghosts" of the hair owners, because buying and using other people's body parts can be uncomfortable.

From beginning to end, the entire supply chain has been secretly shrouded, combing, sorting, and processing comb waste, which has formed a complete industry. Although the finished product goes to China through China, the hair itself may be a mixture of many Asian countries. “Without distinction, all together,” Tarot said, there is such a thing in the whole Asian region, long-haired women will put away the hair that fell when combing hair and shampooing, and sold it to the street after a few years. A hawker who collects hair in the lanes. She also took out a serve from the bag: it was the hair she had combed her hair for three years, saying it was worth about a dollar.

The collected hair was put together and changed hands again and again until finally entering the sorting plants in Bangladesh, India and Myanmar. The wages in these areas are low and people urgently need work. Tarot visited the sorting workshops and families in Myanmar and India. He saw the woman kneeling on the ground, splitting the hair a little bit, combing it, and dividing the hair into bundles by length. She said, “The work is very hard and strong, 1.5 Kilograms of hair takes 80 hours to comb."

According to the report, in Myanmar, women receive 100 grams of hair every morning and 100 grams in the afternoon. The villagers will also come to buy a pile of waste hair and take it home, combing it and selling it back to the hawker.

The next step is processing. The outer layer of the hair - the epidermis - has a slab, the scales are all in the same direction, much like a fish scale. However, the problem of waste hair is entangled, and the scales are different in direction and will knot. Tarot explained that in China, these hairs are usually soaked in a chemical solution to completely remove the epidermis. "This solves the problem of knotting, but the result of removing the epidermis is lower hair quality. But in any case, the final product looks just as good, you can't imagine the journey of hair."

Tarot also said that throughout history, the international hair market has always had political elements.

For example, after the demise of the Qing Dynasty in China, men were forced to cut scorpions. "Many of these scorpions have flowed into the market, but traders worry that men will not leave their scorpions, and it will be more difficult to collect long hair that has fallen from the comb." In the late 1960s, the Chinese wig industry encountered problems again, that is, At this time, Indian women became an important pillar of the entire industry.

According to reports, in southern India, millions of women go to the temple every year to shave their heads. This tradition has been around for a long time. Tarot said that this is a way of pledge. In the early years, the hair was directly thrown into the river and washed away.

At the Temple of Tirumala, sometimes there are up to 650 razors, and the pilgrims are sitting cross-legged in front of them. The razor's hands and feet are sharp, and the shaved hair is quickly put away. Every few months, the temple is at Online auction once. Then these hairs begin a magical journey. Where have they gone? Who is the final destination?