Hong Kong's most retro barber shop

Besides xiaolongbao, Shanghai's greatest export to Hong Kong -- and one that has remained unchanged for more than half a century -- is expert barbers.

Gao Detian is one of these barber masters, or "see fu" as he is dubbed in Cantonese. He takes pride in the longevity of his grooming business.

"Nothing has changed in my shop," says Gao. "From floor to ceiling, everything in the shop has stayed the same as 30 years ago."

Now 66, Gao opened his shop Shanghai Kiu Kwun Barber Shop in North Point three decades ago. It is one of the largest remaining Shanghainese barber shops in Hong Kong. 

To visit Gao's two-story shop is like walking into a movie scene in Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love."

"There were so many Shanghainese here in the 1960s and 1970s, everyone spoke the same tongue," says Gao. "There were other Shanghainese barber shops on this street but now all of them have moved."

After the Communist Party seized control of Shanghai in 1949, many citizens fled to Hong Kong and clustered in North Point.

As Shanghai had long been synonymous with style, Shanghainese barbers remained the arbiters of cool in Hong Kong for many years.

Now, what was once avant-garde has become retro and the see fu himself has fallen behind the times. Not many Shanghai barber shops remain in Hong Kong and Kiu Kwun is one of the last.

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There are two entrances, one for ladies and one for gentlemen.

The gentlemen's department is done in a simple, somber whitewash. A few grey-haired customers lean back in the antique saloon chairs waiting to be shaved.

The ladies' door, on the other hand, leads to a world packed with panache. A red staircase gives way to a room decked out in bold pinks, blues, greens, marble and gold.

Gao introduces his shop's interior design with pride.

"The new salons nowadays won't spend so much on interior design and furnishing," says Gao while caressing the shiny golden stripes on wall. "See, it still looks very new after all these years."

Then, he moves on to the barber's chairs and hairdressing tools.

"These are made in Japan," says Gao. "You can adjust the height of the chairs and it has a massage function. Each of them cost me more than HK$10,000."

"We do not use electric clippers for trimming or shaving. We use a pair of manual hair clippers, which we call 'the frog.' These are no longer in production though."

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