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撰文/ 新竹專班學生 陳淑容
更新日期:2004-09-18 Saturday
點閱次數:2527
Curtis 回想初來乍到台灣時，一切既新鮮陌生，文化不同連理個髮都大有學問，什麼？美容院的美媚不會剪髮？只會洗頭、送茶水、熱情招呼你…？且看Curtis的理髮奇遇記。
Unbelievable! Another year has passed us by and already we are more than 3 years into the new century. Perhaps as a guest living in another country, the time seems to pass more quickly than when I’m at home in Texas.
Speaking of being a guest in another country far from home, this month I’ll share with you one of the interesting things that can happen to those of us who are new to another country and culture.
One of my most memorable experiences so far in Taiwan happened within days of my arrival in Taipei back in October of 1992. It was time for me to get a haircut, and in my first few days here I had noticed there were an awful lot of barber shops and beauty salons around the city…and some open quite late too. I wondered why Taipei was so special that it had so many places to get a cut and asked myself “How often do people in Taipei get their haircut anyway?”
At that time, I also noticed there were an awful lot of bowling alleys and KTVs – many open 24 hours. Same question came to my mind: “How late do Taiwanese go bowling and sing?”
I took a walk around the Taipei Train Station area behind the AsiaWorld department store looking for a place to get my hair cut. Many of the shops were quite small and several didn’t have any customers – at least ones I could see! The first shop I finally wandered into refused to give me a cut. At first I thought she couldn’t understand English, so I made a motion like scissors cutting over my head. However, she still refused me.
Puzzled by her refusal, I continued searching and finally chose a much larger beauty salon that had LOTS of beautiful girls working there. As soon as I stepped in the salon, I was warmly greeted by a few of the girls and one who could speak a little English listened to me explain I wanted a haircut. I was offered a shampoo and head massage, but I politely declined.
It was while I was in the chair getting my hair cut and I had time to observe the scene in the beauty salon that I started to realize that this was no ‘ordinary’ hair cutting shop. This was certainly like nothing I had ever seen in the U.S.! Lots of beautiful young girls, many of whom were not hairstylists but were instead giving shampoos, head massages, and greeting customers as they entered.
It wasn’t until some weeks later when I had been working and I started making some local friends here that I had the chance to relate my experience to someone and find out the truth about the abundance of barber shops and beauty salons in Taipei. It was quite an eye-opener for me…and funny when I thought about how innocent I was to the ways of my new home in Taiwan!
No matter how much we read in books or see on TV about other countries or their cultures, there are still so many unexpected and surprising things we will likely encounter. What I thought would be a fairly routine search for a place to get my hair cut turned out to be quite an enlightening introduction to one of the lesser known cultural differences between Taiwan and my own country. People always laugh whenever they hear this story, and even many years later I still laugh at myself every time I tell this story.
看到畢業照，知道畢業的腳步近了！三年的辛苦奔波，有了實質的回饋。除了感謝學校、老師，更要感謝家人的支持！最後藉「北護校訊」一角，寫下竹專三年的心路歷程。算為竹專第一次也是最後一次發聲。希望所有北護人記得曾有過我們這麼一班－「新竹專班」。
