A hairy tale.

My hair is long now. 

At Easter 2011, I went on holiday to Yunnan province in China with two friends. That was the beginning to a lot of change.

It was the last year of my below fifties and a part of the change had already happened. My wife and I had agreed to be host parents for a young German boy, who had chosen to come to Hong Kong to finish his MYP education at the school where we work. 

For many years we had been used to be our self as we'd long chosen not to get any children, suddenly we had a 16 year young man living with us.

That was a good experience. Our little family worked well. Therefore I decided to travel with him and another friend and colleague to China for the Easter break, so he could acquire experience of the real China before returning to Europe and Germany. Hong Kong is China, however it is China light.

The choice fell on Yunnan province in the south-eastern corner of that huge country. 

We flew into the main city of the province called Kunming. The city isn't that well known, although it was crucial for allied pilots in World War II, to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based in China. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hump)

Of that heritage, there is very little evidence in the city and if it wasn't for a famous hostel called "The Hump, in the old city centre, I wouldn't have had any idea. Now it is like many other Chinese cities. Bustling, dynamic and with a rich cultural life. 

From there we travelled by rail to the ancient city of Dali, to spend some days enjoying fresh air, hiking and biking. Later we headed further northeast wards to the even more famous city of Lijiang and the tiger leaping gorge canyon. But that is not what this post is about.

In several ways that trip became that young fellows gate to manhood, and maybe also my own gate to the the fifties and maybe the beginning of a crisis of the middle age.

I don't really know about that yet. I don't think that was omnipresent and not sure if it is now, even I'm in the so called midlife.

So what was it that changed at that trip that made me make a point of growing my hair long?

Probably this will be the most disappointing ending to a story that anyone  have ever experienced. However this is just how it happened.

It was on the plane back from Kunming to Hong Kong. After the light meal they served on the plane, we all got one of them famous Chinese fortune cookies. A wee sweet crispy thing, like a wafer or so, and inside it a little paper slip with a sentence or statement that could mean the world to you.

In my little cookie the paper slip said: " Maybe you should try another hairstyle".

With the kind of hair I have, I'm afraid there isn't that many options. I can either go without any hair, have short hair or carry long hair. Once I've tried having no hair by shaving my head. That made me look rather spooky, like one of them neo not mentionable.

At that moment I didn't really think about my hair and had it plain normal conservative short. Professional short. Or what ever. It was just so normal. Reading that little slip from the fortune cookie in that plane did something to me. I made the decision to grow my hair long to see what would happen.

Immediately there wasn't any change. Before that trip I started running and exercising a lot and lost a lot of all the pounds I had to much of anyway. That worked and I carried on doing that. In the summer my wife and I visited Japan for the first time, that was something new and had been a lifelong dream . 

My hair kept growing. Some colleagues started mentioning it. I did nothing. Except sometimes when some one asked my why I let my hair grow, I answered: "because I can". Shame on me, as some of those who asked was men younger than myself, who had to shave what they had left of hair.

When my wife went to the hairdresser in town -normally I came to pick her up and we could have a date at some of the fancy restaurants in the neighbourhood- I came a bit earlier and the hairdresser offered to tidy it just a little bit, so it could keep growing and look maintained.

Changes began to happen, at the start of 2012, I got offered a nice promotion and also offered a chance to visit the United States the very first time. Maybe the fortune cookie in some way spark something. At least I can choose to believe that.

Now we are here in 2016, my hair still long but now pulled back in a nice ponytail and it has in some way become my trademark and I still like it. 

More important though, I think it is valuable and important that we can demonstrate to a true diversity to our students and make the statement that it is fine to be and look different yet still be integrated, accepted and respected, even in a professional school environment.

The world need more diversity and tolerance. We cannot all be the same.