As far as ostentatious male hair coloration goes, you can generally break the world down into three groups of people:

1. Those that never think mens hair should be bleached, dyed, frosted, highlighted or batiked.
2. Those that think such behavior is perfectly normal
3. Those that are cool with it until you reach 30, at which point.. really?

I can already tell from the subtle burning across my scalp that this is probably not a good idea

Those that fall into camps 1 and 3 (a significant portion of the world, I’m sure) probably don’t back some of my fashion choices this year, and as I typically am not a “camp 2″ guy in general, I’m not sure I do either.  I can’t fully explain my rationale for the travesty that would engulf my flowing locks like a perverse halo for a good portion of the year, other than to say that much like whitewater rafting or Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (I know it’s a classic, but I could rarely handle more than five minutes of it at a time), it’s something I never need experiment with again.

The idea for the change (the first one, at least) came about over a casual conversation with Adrian Daniel “Sully” Sullivan (who answers to all four of those names) about his dalliances with hair dye over the past four years he’s spent in China.  Upon my first meeting with the man, his hair had settled upon a subtle bleached frosting that seemed to complement him well, though he’s had blue and green periods in the past.  The primary explanation: If you’re a foreigner here in Chongqing, you already stand out more than a Phish-head at the Republican National Convention, so it’s not like any other peculiarities will cause you to stand out more.

Why not go a little blond?  Nothing drastic or crazy… just a little extra color to liven things up a bit.  And if it goes horribly awry, it’s not as though there’s an abundance of friends around to relentlessly torment you into getting a quick buzz cut.  Anything goes, right?

It would’ve been a perfect plan were it not for the fact that I speak no Chinese.  And the average Chinese hair stylist?  Not a master of the English language either.  So it is, that I ended up with this:

So this is what it's like to be a ginger

Yes, despite the assistance of multiple pictures of handsome men that pulled off hair dying much better than I, this rust-colored affront to nature is what the Chinese hair salon thought I was requesting.

It’s not a total failure.  Halloween is just around the corner, and Lisa and I had been racking our brains to come up with good costume ideas for the Singapore Restaurant’s holiday party.  Since nothing with this hair color could clearly have come from Earth, it provides us with a starting point for what would be award-winning alien costumes.

The award-winning alien costumes, and our prize -- a large bottle of champagne. Note how good this hair color actually looks with green skin. Sadly, my skin is normally of a pinkish-orange hue and the "champagne" was a sickly purple color and tasted like triaminic cough syrup. But the bragging rights were still good.

After a week as a ginger, I became bound and determined to make the most of my situation and return to the stylist for a more standard bleaching.  Why stop at ginger when there are so many brighter but equally unnatural colors available to me?

Problem solved?

Hair: Phase 2. Fish: About to die.

Yes, another great success!  My students are amused and I decide to roll with it for as long as I can to get the full experience.  Sadly (or thankfully), all good things must come to an end, and with only one month to go before a fairly respectable wedding, I decided it was time to end this little reindeer game and return to dark brown normalcy.

My attempts as seeking the assistance of the local Chinese thus far proving awkwardly unsuccessful, I recruited the help of Cookie AKA Jenny from London.  A steadfast ball of energy, social grace and interestingly colored hair, Cookie likely had more experience with this sort of thing than almost anyone else I knew here and was only too glad to assist.  I told her in advance of the importance of more “formal” coloring for my upcoming wedding and she assured me that I’d be back to brown in no time.

“Auburn, eh?  That doesn’t really sound like brown…”

“No, it totally is,” she said.  ”Oh my god.  You’ll look fabulous!”

“I’m kind of trying to look less fabulous these days.”  My spider sense tingled violently as she rubbed the not-at-all-brown dye into my hair, but the girl was just too excited about her current project for me to reject her and I allowed the travesty to ensue.  Brown dye should not froth in one’s hair like rancid grape kool-aid, should it?  According to Cookie, it should!

Auburn doesn't even seem to be a distant cousin of brown

Doing my best to rock the purple hair. Despite being the least natural color thus far, it looks the best I'd say

A week before the wedding I pay a final visit to a new stylist.  It’s not that I think one Chinese stylist might be better than another; I simply can’t get the laowai discount twice.

What is the laowai discount?  Simple.  Offer to let them take your picture to put on their door or in ads for a rebate.  It’s usually good for at least thirty percent off.  This time around, the brown finally settles in, at least under Chongqing’s omnipresent gray skies.  The warm, bright sun in Thailand permeates through my hair in odd ways, bringing out a bit more of the purple, though it takes a bit of focus to notice and looks only slightly unnatural.

No regrets.  But probably no need for any repeats either…