By staff reporter HUO JIANYING

EYES on a soccer pitch are irresistibly drawn to Ronaldo, and his goal-scoring prowess, but his protean haircuts also score a hit with the fans. His latest inverted Mohican haircut, which made its debut in the FIFA World Cup, soon became widely sported by soccer aficionados. One Brazilian barber said that he had given over 50 customers the "Ronaldo cut" since the World Cup. This admiration does not, however, extend to the ladies, and it is reported that Ronaldo has been obliged to apologize to mothers eminently unimpressed by their sons' personal tribute to his coiffure.

The "Ronaldo cut" is, however, nothing new to Chinese people. It has much in common with the A Fu cut, a traditional hairstyle for children in the summer, being cool and easy to keep.

A Fu is a traditional character among the Huishan clay figurines created 400 years ago. In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) there existed a large number of temples in Huishan, Jiangsu Province, where pilgrims went to pray for longevity, good fortune, and offspring. They would generally offer clay figurines as a sacrifice to the Longevity God, the Goddess of Mercy, and the various flying apsaras -- celestial beings, of which A Fu was the most popular.

A Fu clay figures.

According to folklore, A Fu was a youth who lost his life in a battle with demons. As a gesture of commemoration, the local people in his hometown fashioned his likeness in clay. The A Fu image gradually evolved and extended to that of a pair of chubby children: a little boy with all his hair, apart from a peach-shape lock over his forehead, shaved, and a little girl with clumps of hair on either side of her head.

In ancient China girls usually wore their hair in two coils or plaits, while small boys wore various styles of bangs: on the forehead, at the back, on either side of the head, or in short braids.

Coronets of Manhood

In ancient times, the sons of royal families went through guan (coronet) rites on coming of age. In the Zhou Dynasty (1100-256 BC) manhood was believed to begin at age 20. These rites, attended by many guests, were held in the ancestral temple, and presided over by the youth's father. Three coronets were granted, one of black hessian, representing the privilege of peerage, another of leather, signifying obligation to undergo national service, and one of fine-spun reddish black hessian, indicating formal admission to adult social intercourse.

The sons of the common folk would simply coil their hair and wrap it in a piece of cloth upon entering manhood. This style of hair distinguished boys from men.

A coronet is not, as many people presume, a cap. The ancient coronet is small, just large enough to cover a lock of coiled hair. They were made from diverse materials, including hessian, bamboo, leather, jade, and metal, and in various designs. The coronets men wore signified their social and economic status.

The Coil-and-Pin Hair Ritual for Maids Entering Womanhood

A traditional design: One Hundred Boys.

The equivalent womanhood ritual was called the ji (hairpin) rite. Chinese ancients believed that girls came of age at 15, when they could marry. From that time onward, they would coil their hair and fasten it with a hairpin, called a ji.

Ancient Chinese women wore their hair in buns of various sizes, shapes and positions, the vogue being led by the women of noble birth. Women's fashions during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) mirrored Tang economic prosperity for their extravagant magnificence. Hair was worn in plump chignons, often augmented with wigs and hairpieces, and further ornamented with gorgeous jewelry and flowers, and combs of wood and bamboo.

Hair Signifies Head

Confucius asserted: "One should never damage the body, including the skin and hair, because all are bestowed by one's parents. This is the fundamental principle of filial piety." So Confucians insisted that hair care was not merely a matter of personal image, but of morality.

An unkempt appearance is traditionally regarded as discourteous and shameful in China. During a civil war within the State of Wei, the ribbon on the coronet of Zilu, one of Confucius' students, was cut off, and his hair came loose. He cried: "A gentleman should always wear his coronet even after death." He accordingly put down his weapon to retie his hair, and was killed by the enemy.

During the Three Kingdoms Period, warlord Cao Cao (155-220), in a bid to win farmers' support, issued a command to his armies, forbidding them to tread on any crops, the penalty being decapitation. One day soon after, Cao Cao's horse bolted, and galloped over farmland, spoiling fields full of seedlings. After the incident Cao Cao insisted on due punishment, but his underlings did not dare to execute their tyrannical leader. Cao Cao eventually hit on a compromise: he cut his hair, rather than his head, off. These days such a practice appears absurdly vain and ritualistic, but in ancient China cutting one's hair was actually a severe penalty. The tradition of treasuring hair in the same way as life carried on through to the mid-17th century.

Hair or Head, a Critical Decision

Tang women's hairstyle as depicted in a mural.

In 1644, the Manchus gained mastery over China, and established the Qing Dynasty. Manchu men had maintained a distinctive hairstyle, where the hair at the front of the head was shaved, and it was grown long and worn in a plait at the back. To assert Manchu domination of the Han people, who far outnumbered this ethnic minority, the Qing monarch took a series of measures, including a decree issued in 1645 prescribing, "All men of the Qing Dynasty should follow the Manchu half shaved head style of hair. No excuse or argument will be accepted. Anyone disobeying this law will be regarded in the same way as bandits, and executed."

This "shaving" decree incurred vehement protest among the Han people. Several hair-defending uprisings broke out in southern China alone, but were summarily suppressed. During the 260-year reign of the Qing Dynasty, therefore, half of the Chinese population lost half of its hair. Worse still, it was not just hair-growth but also thinking that was confined. The feudal reactionary rule of the Qing Dynasty thus substantially impeded social progress in China.

Late in the Qing Dynasty the Taiping Revolution erupted. Rebels vowed to restore the tradition of men wearing a full head of long hair, and were consequently known as the "long hairs" by the Qing court. The revolution was eventually suppressed, but although the Qing patricians preserved their pigtails for a while longer, they failed to save the dynasty from falling apart. After the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, a national campaign was launched requiring all men to cut off their pigtails, which signaled the era of short hair for Chinese men.

Throughout Chinese history, hairstyles have been a sign of the times, to the extent of having a bearing on contemporary politics. Today, such obsolete notions and practices relating to hair are long-gone. Hair is now colored and styled according to individual taste, and is merely a facet of beauty and fashion, with no deeper social or other connotations.