Don’t split hair

Sun Jianli, 40, emerged from a back room of his home clutching a pack containing five three-foot-long tresses of human hair, known in these parts as ‘‘people fur.’’ ‘‘Girls don’t grow it long like this anymore,’’ he said. Sun is a player in an enormous network of merchants, manufacturers and retailers who have turned China into the world’s largest wig and hair exporting power. Fuelled by 40,000 dealers, the industry is an example of how China is becoming a major player in the world economy.

Last year, China supplied 96 per cent of the 10.7 tons of hair imported by the US. But now dealers collect and process the hair on their own. Chinese importers have also bought most of India’s supply — 3.3 tons so far this year. China entered the business in the 19th century, when merchants in Qingdao city shipped products to Europe using hair coming from surrounding Shandong province, said C.K. Chao, a fifth-generation manufacturer.

When Jacqueline Kennedy set off a wig boom among women seeking to imitate her hairdos, it resonated as far away as Shandong. But, by the 1980s, the Kennedy wave receded and wigs went out of fashion, as they were replaced by: hair extensions, braids, weaves and curls.

Since 1990 the price of hair has quadrupled. ‘‘I’m going to hold on to these babies for a while,’’ Sun said, tugging at the lengthy locks, ‘‘because I know the price is going up.’’(LAT-WP)