Traditional Chinese Barber, Batu Pahat

Talk to my Dad (or any older generation Malaysian Chinese) and he will tell you that each Chinese ethnicity comes with specialised trades. The Hainanese cook and make coffee. Xinghua (Putian) folks take care of transportation. Cantonese people are ‘dai chow’ (tze-char) masters. Those from Fuzhou are typically barbers and shop owners.

How accurate is this? It appears that these stereotypes only apply to Chinese migrants in Malaysia and Singapore. When the Chinese arrived in Nanyang in waves, they immediately sought out the clan associations (kongsi) of their same ethnicity. These clan associations were powerful and looked out for their own. The new migrants were given jobs in their fellow clan members’ establishments where they learn the trade. When it was time for them to branch out on their own, it was only natural for them to do what they had learned and knew best.

Thus, unintentional groupings of ethnicity-based occupations.

A Malaysian Fuzhou barber… that’s my uncle, yo!

A quick Google search confirms this: in America, many Fuzhou migrants worked in restaurants, it was the only jobs available to them in their new country. In China, there is little or no documentation of such stereotypes.

My grandfather and his brothers ended up as prime examples of this phenomena. To escape poverty, four brothers left Fuzhou for British Malaya, three stayed on to became barbers.

Mildly interesting: my grandfather left China at the age of 17. The ship that carried him capsized and he was stranded for over a month near Hong Kong! Luckily he made it, else there’d be no me 😛

Yeap, a classic Takara barber chair with the original red cover.

My grandfather and his brothers rented the corner shop house along Jalan Jenang, Batu Pahat. Upstairs was home, sections of the living space divided into rooms, one for each family. In the parlour below, there were three barber chairs, one for each brother.

As far as I know, only my eldest granduncle’s sons picked up the old family trade. Today, only one uncle continues the legacy. The corner shop house has been renovated for safety reasons, and he had since moved the barber parlour to the middle section of the lot.

One day I dropped by to say hi and to take photos of him at work. The red signboard that says “Xia Guang Li Fa“: a combination of his and his deceased brother’s names, and the word barber, remains.

Lately my uncle has been appearing in newspapers and blogs. I think people are intrigued by those still practising trades of the old.

Pimpage: haircuts go for under RM10.

During breaks, he sits at his workstation sharpening and polishing his tools, and shaping aluminium tin cans into birds and what-not. The radio is almost always on, belting out timeless Chinese classics.

If you’re in the area, go say hi to my uncle! My auntie sells yam rice from morning till afternoon, there’s a popiah stall that has been there since I was a kid, and a stall selling freshly made soy bean milk and dessert.

Xia Guang Li Fa
No. 1, Jalan Jenang,
83000 Batu Pahat,
Johor.