A community of Chinese women successfully run some of Chennai’s oldest beauty parlours

By 1968, a group of women of Chinese descent began arriving in Chennai, shaping not just eyebrows but also the beauty standards of an entire generation

“Hair wash, massage and eyebrows,” instructs Mary Lee, speaking to her assistant. Immediately, products are plucked off shelves, the air conditioner is turned on and curtains are drawn. Work begins.

“They are all my regulars,” she says, pointing inside. “Can’t tell you how long I can talk to you. This is a busy time for me,” she says, but sits down for a conversation much longer than anticipated.

Rose Beauty Parlour behind the busy Vannanthurai bus stop in Besant Nagar, has a no-nonsense yet generous personality that it has borrowed from its owner. The single-room parlour partitioned by sliding doors, has thick leather salon chairs that are permanently reclined as the levers do not work. There are several crosses, scissors and combs, threads to remove eye brows, tins of hair colour, and boxes of loose powder that make the room smell like roses.

Bits of Mary’s Oriental connection sit proudly on display — there is a calendar with Chinese dates, posters of fuk (pronounced fook in Chinese, meaning luck), and several statues of Buddhas.

“Luck is very important to the Chinese. We replace the fuk posters during Chinese New Year. This year, my cousin from Calcutta sent it to me. I think it has helped. But enough about that. Let me begin my story,” she says.

A quest to find the connection between Chennai and ‘Chinese beauty parlour’, lead us to Mary’s parlour. She is one of several people of Chinese origin, who moved with her family far away from home to establish businesses, in the hope of prosperity after their families fled battles of internal strife in 20th Century China. It was a time when the men prefixed restaurants with the word ‘Chinese’, while women did the same with beauty parlours.

When asked why ‘beauty parlours’ and not other professions, Joe Thomas Karackattu, Associate Professor at the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at IIT Madras, who has made two films on South India’s historical connections with the Chinese, says that the ideal choice of occupation was to deal in leather which other native communities here were weary of indulging in, owing to religious considerations.