A history of imperialism and post-war through the most innocuous object: the wig. We start with the export of hair for wigs, which was one of the biggest sources of Asian income in Mao Zedong’s China, move on to Hong Kong’s fundamental role as a trade hub and arrive at the American embargo on what they called “communist hair”, as a way of curbing Asia’s economic growth. All this is told with an unusual sense of humor.
The production and sale of wigs were an important part of Asian economic growth in the second half of the 20th century, and with the American embargo on the “communist hair” trade in 1965, Hong Kong, still under British administration, began to serve as an intermediary and legitimizing Chinese hair to satisfy the high demand for wigs in the West. In this ghost story, a poetic fiction is created that establishes the journey of hair through Asia and its diaspora, tracing in an imaginative, fun and intelligent way the history of oriental hair and the politics of relations between China and the West. The sight of a wig, under which there was a translucent face of a female ghost, accompanied by the 1930s Chinese song “When will you return”, in a 1970s cover performed by Teresa Tang, begins an impressive journey of a spirit that, fixed in the hair, allows itself to travel through history crossing borders, cultures and different eras until finally freeing itself in the lyrics of the song. (Margarida Moz)
