called premium hair is actually mixed with goat hair.
because of the increased costs of obtaining high-quality human hair,
manufacturers in China have resorted to buying moderate quantities of
real hair (which is often Chinese hair), and then mixing it with goat
hair to save costs and to increase the volume of supply.
extensions, wigs and weaves are big business. Buyers in hair salons and
shopping malls are often told they are getting real human hair – but
when you look closely, sometimes things are not as they seem.
In a tiny village in Hunan province, central China a man
dressed in a white vest and shorts rides around the dusty streets on a
rusty bicycle, shouting and ringing his bell.
I stop him and ask what he’s up to. “I’m collecting hair,” he
says. “When I ring my bell women come out and I cut their hair. I make
hair extensions.”
I ask him how much he pays women for their hair. “I offer them a good price, but I need to make a profit,” he says with a smile.
The streets of the village are covered in hair drying beneath
the scorching sun. Some of the hair is definitely human hair, yet the
number of shaven goats wandering the streets suggests otherwise.
After collecting the hair, he takes it to a small factory where ten women weave it together into hair extensions.
Looking on, I can see that some of the hair being woven
together is human and some of it definitely is not. He then sells it to
larger factories where it is treated with chemicals before being sold to
shops around the country.
I left Hunan wanting to see where the hair went next. So I
visited the megacity of Guangzhou. The city – formerly known as Canton –
has always been one of China’s most important trading hubs and
wealthiest cities.
dominate the skyline close to the vast and murky brown Pearl River. The
tops of the skyscrapers are hidden amid the thick palpable pollution.
Beneath the smog is where I met Lily. She owns a shop selling
wigs and hair extensions in Guangzhou’s enormous beauty exchange centre
in an area known as Sanyuanli.
Here you can buy anything from nail polish and night cream to
foot spas and foundation. The lower floor of the market however is
dedicated to hair – terrifying mannequins sport wigs and weaves of every
colour the rainbow has to offer.
Lily sits on a stool in her shop, bunching the recently
delivered hair together into fringes, curls and metre-long straight
extensions.
The hair is held together with labels which supposedly tell
us their country of origin. Here, apparently, one can buy hair from
Peru, India and Brazil.
There are no Chinese customers here though – every buyer
seems to be from Africa. Nigerians, Ghanaians, Congolese, South
Africans, Angolans and Ugandans scour the impressive hall for the
best-priced hair extensions available. They tell me they can triple
their money when they get home.
Towards the end of a busy day I ask shop owner Lily how her
business is doing. “It’s ok, we used to sell to Europe and America, but
now nearly 100% of my clients are in Africa,” she says.
Lily shows me a list of the nationalities of the traders she
sells to – of the 39 countries on the list, 37 are in Africa, reflecting
the large African community in this city.
“It’s good business for me, but the problem is we pay more for
the hair now, as living and production costs in China are higher now.”
Lily then describes, how in order to make her business
profitable, she has to use fake scales when weighing out hair to
customers and buy a mixture of human hair and synthetic or goat hair to
lower costs.
“We say it is Indian hair or Brazilian hair, but in fact it
is normally Chinese hair or even goat hair. They never realise. This is
the only way we can keep things cheap,” she says, adding that her
customers always drive a hard bargain.
Before we can finish our conversation Marie from Uganda comes
in, demanding: “I want Brazilian hair, only Brazilian, give me your
best quality and best price.”
The negotiation goes on for hours under the watchful eyes of
the wig-wearing, angry-looking mannequins. As the sun sinks and the moon
begins to rise over Guangzhou’s polluted skyline, Marie leaves
empty-handed.
I run after her as she leaves the shop to ask if she knows
that some of the hair isn’t human. “Of course I know. The Chinese think
we’re stupid. I come all the way from Uganda and they think I don’t know
hair,” she says.
Marie pauses and then lets out a huge, hearty laugh before
coming close to whisper in my ear: “I laugh a lot when I go home and I
know that the beautiful women of Kampala have goats on their heads.”