QuoteReplyTopic: Hair Politics, or Politics & Hair? Posted: July 05 2004 at 10:27am
Excerpts from a reprint (in my local newspaper) of an article published in the Los Angeles Times:
Party tries to reverse rebel youth movement
BEIJING -- When fathers of the Chinese Communist Party mapped out the road to socialist perfection, they didn't give much thought to green hair.
But amid growing concern it is losing touch with an increasingly rebellious youth, the government recently announced steps to bolster social, ethical and moral standards among underage Chinese.
"What they're really afraid of is not political dissidents. It's long hair, decadence, punks and hip-hop. That's raising more concern than anything else," said Hung Huang, publisher of the Chinese edition of _Seventeen_ magazine. "In essence, China is experiencing its first real generation gap, and it's a 7 on the Richter scale...."
I presume that their mention of long hair is on boys/men, as girls and women have been wearing their hair long for many centuries.
Chinese men in the old days used to wear their hair long, much like Legolas in Lord of the Rings. Much later, Chinese martial arts films showed no man or woman with short cuts (e.g. Tay Du Ky and others). Later on, the Manchu/Qing imposed the "queue" which required shaving the rest of the head hair, but still left the long plait in the back. so really, China is no stranger to long hair. It shouldn't be anything unusual.
Now as for the neon colors and other qualities the Chinese government dislikes, I really wouldn't know...
If there hadn't been such tight control over the people before, it wouldn't be so much of a shock in the way the young people are now. I mean, in America and the rest of the Western world, the older generations have been upset over the younger generations' hair since the fifties, at least. If China had gone through emulation of Elvis and the Beatles like the Western world did, they would've been prepared for the guys with long or green hair before now.
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Kuroneko
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Added thought. . . They probably also caused the generation gap to be wider themselves by keeping such tight control, of course. The more something is forbidden, the more people, especially young ones, want to do it. So if they crack down on the foreign-influenced hair and music and everything, they'll only succeed in making it all the more popular.
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