Chinese identities expressed through hirsute pursuits

The Power of Hair in Chinese Society 1500 – 2000 will be explored at a free public seminar at UQ St Lucia campus on Thursday, October 27 at 2pm.

Associate Professor Chi-Kong Lai , who specializes in modern Chinese social and business history, will present the seminar for UQ’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies.

Dr Lai said for centuries, Chinese people had used their hair to publicly convey their individual or collective qualities such as gender, sexuality, marital status, religion, class, occupation and ethnicity.

“The Chinese have used their hair to conform or stand apart, to comply or resist, to follow or to lead,” he said.

“And so as in all societies, in Chinese society control over what people do with their hair has been a potent but generally unrecognized means to exert power and influence.”

Dr Lai will explore narratives about hair in Chinese society from 1500 to 2000. He will explain how Chinese people have chosen—or been forced—to use their hair creatively to express their identities as individuals and as members of collectives within Chinese society, making hairstyle a distinctive mirror of social, political and economic change in China.

Dr Lai, a reader in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at UQ is the only China specialist to have won the American Economic History Association`s internationally competitive Best Dissertation Award, the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize.

He has published two books, The Reminiscences of Charles Cheng Che Lee and The State and Market in Modern China. Currently, he is working on a book entitled The Power of Hair in Chinese Society.

The seminar will be held in the Centre’s own seminar room, Level 4 of the Forgan Smith Tower, Building No. 1, University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus.

Members of the university community and the general public are invited to attend this free seminar with refreshments to follow. Please note that currently, due to refurbishments, the only entrance to the seminar room is via the stairs.

For further information, please contact: Ms Rebecca Ralph, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, telephone (07) 3346 9764, Email: admin.cccs@uq.edu.au.