Dyeing My Hair: A Personal Chronicle

For various reasons, my white hair has become noticeably more abundant, and it grows in clumps. Meanwhile, my natural hair leans toward a brownish-yellow. On top of that, the company moved several kilometers away, making it no longer convenient to keep going to a certain barbershop. So I decided to get my hair dyed, and conveniently burn through the remaining balance before switching shops.

The Plan and Process

As shown above, much of my natural hair sits around level 6, a brownish-yellow state, while some strands are pure white—level 10 or beyond. The goal was to bring all of my hair to somewhere above level 5 and below level 6, pretending to be a normal person.

Hair dyeing works by coating the hair with a layer of dye. If the target is a lighter color, bleaching has to come first. But since I was going darker, we skipped that step and mixed the color right away.

Teacher Tony first prepared a bowl of paste, containing light and dark dyes. Once adjusted, the surface of the paste was a fairly light color. Skeptical about the shade, I asked, and Teacher Tony assured me it was mixed precisely to the desired final color—judge by the result.

So, after shielding my skin, Teacher Tony began working strand by strand with a comb and brush, soaking the hair thoroughly, until my whole head looked like Śākyamuni's—every strand fixed in place, the same light color as the paste. Then a helmet-shaped lamp was brought out to dry it.

After drying, a quick rinse, and it was basically done.

Afterward

Without bleaching, a full dye job in Beijing costs only a few hundred yuan, and you walk out the door.

Right after dyeing, the color sits closer to level 5. I had a few clumps of white hair right at the bangs; after dyeing they landed around level 8. The "make it all one color" goal was only so-so. On top of that, dye gradually fades: the originally white sections fade back to around level 9, and the originally brown hair fades to 7–8, even if it started at level 6. Meanwhile, new growth comes in white or brownish-yellow, slowly mingling with the dyed hair after each haircut. The result is a mix of level 5.5–9 yellows and whites.

A week later, my boss looked closely at my hair and asked whether I had dyed it. Over the following months, various friends, watching the color fade, each checked in to confirm. Back home, my family never asked—perhaps, long accustomed to me, they simply couldn't imagine me dyeing my hair.