Today’s barbers might be
ex-soldiers or unemployed
Vietnamese scraping a living
together, but they share the
same humble beginnings
with some of the country’s
finest hairstylists
above A haircut in
progress outside the
Botanical Gardensabove left A typical
street scene: haircuts
right on the pavementbelow left Cuòng
trim’s a customer’s hair
in a back alley of the
Hoan Kiem districtUSD1 to USD4 (the exact amount depending
on your relationship with the barber and on
his repute). Many Vietnamese still value a
frugal snip, so barbers continue to ply their
trade despite new fines from police, says Trần
Quốc Cường Libor, a Czech-educated, self-
taught barber. Cường studied to be a machinist
as a young man, but found no work on his
return. Instead, he learnt hair-cutting skills
by practising on mannequin heads for a solid
month, then set out to rid pavements, back
alleys and car parks of split ends. The 54-year-
old now tackles six heads of hair a day, and
watches movies on his phone the rest of the
time. He likes that his job is relaxing.
Of course, owners of barbershops (often
with the sign cắt tóc nam, or “men’s haircuts”)
resent their unregulated counterparts for
shirking rent, taxes and work registrations. But
living on the run is hardly paradise. Cường
aspires to afford his own shop someday, but
until his – and many other street barbers’ –
dreams come true, their close shaves with
Hanoi police will continue. ag