Taiwanese Haircut

I normally don't pay for haircuts, but I'd heard about the special Taiwanese style of haircutting so decided to give it a try today. I went in to ShowLin on Shida Lu right next to the Watson's, by recommendation of my friend Sabrina. She said to ask for stylist number 8, but with my poor mandarin and confusion about the process I'm not sure if I actually got number 8 (I was seated at #6).

The whole thing started with a shoulder/neck massage for about 5-10 minutes. Oh, and I was offered some magazines to look at as well - but they were all Chinese and didn't look very interesting. Then she shampooed my hair right while I was sitting without dripping on me at all. For about 20 minutes she worked the shampoo-water mixture through my hair and massaged my scalp the whole time, occasionally working my neck and behind the ears as well. She said something in Chinese I didn't understand, but in after thought I think she was asking me if it was enough. I've heard that you can ask them to continue massaging/shampooing if you don't think it's enough. We moved on to the next step which was the hot water rinse. This one was reclining as you would in the US. This included a little massage as well. Afterwards, I was sent back to my seat.

The stylist came over then and asked me what kind of cut I wanted. I just wanted a trim to get rid of the split ends and even things out a bit - nothing fancy, and certainly nothing like the typical Taiwanese hairstyle (dyed, crimped, and/or permed). This part took another 20-30 minutes as she blow dried my hair, cut it, and dried it some more.

In the end the damage was $399 NT which is about $13 USD. It's the equivalent of a Supercuts/Great Cuts price, but with the 30 minutes of massage, is of much higher value.