All over the world women are concerned with having beautiful hair, but for the ladies of the Yao Huangluo ethnic group, in China, it is about something else. Hair is your most prized possession, a treasure that they take care of throughout their lives, letting it grow until the day they die.
Like many other Chinese peoples, the Hunagluo preserve a lot of ancient traditions and among them the one that arouses the most curiosity among tourists is that of women's obsession with long hair. In fact, the Guinness Book of Records lists them as "the people with the longest hair in the world."
The average hair length of the 120 women living in Huangluo is 1,7 meters, although the longest can exceed 2,1 meters. Until just a few years ago, no woman could show her loose hair in front of anyone except her husband and children.
During the summer women go to the river to wash their hair in the traditional way, although always keeping it hidden from the gazes of the curious with a large blue scarf. One of the most peculiar traditions (fortunately no longer in use) was that if someone happened to see the loose hair of a Huangluo woman, they were obliged to spend three years with their family.
Today there are other times and girls and women proudly show off and style their jet black hair in public, without worrying about the consequences. If their grandmothers saw them!
More information - Tian Hao, the Zen Stylist from China
Images: China Daily