Hair shouldn’t be a concern

All of them look ludicrous, for Chiou himself said freely and openly he didn’t mind a cropped head. He does not think how one wears one’s hair is a human right. They should cut the cackle.

How the hair should be worn certainly was a human right in China ages ago—thousands of years before that noble-sounding term began circulation and the United Nations adopted a declaration on human rights. The Book of Filial Piety, one of the Confucian Apochrypha, says “One receives one’s body, hair and skin from one’s parents; not to injure and damage them is the beginning of filial piety.” For thousands of years, the Chinese, both men and women, wore their hair long. Until the Manchus invaded China and founded the Qing Dynasty in 1644.

The Manchus had a different hairstyle. So the new conquerors compelled the conquered to have part of their head shaven and wear a pigtail. One of the rationales Koxinga and his followers had to fight the Manchu was to keep their long hair, a symbol of Chineseness and their human right. Rebels in the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) were called “long-haired bandits” because they reverted to the ages-old hair style of the Han Chinese. By then, however, the Chinese had totally accepted their shaven head and pigtail that many of them later resisted the order to crop the hair issued by the republican government founded in 1912. In other words, none of the Chinese, including those in Taiwan, have long given up the insistence on hairstyle as one of their inalienable rights as human beings. Or do those DPP leaders and commentators want to be revivalists, in the same vein as the long-haired bandits of nineteenth century Qing China?

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

PrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email