A Photographer Traces Your Hair Extensions All the Way Back to China

Have you ever wondered where your hair extensions come from? Because obviously they don’t just appear at your local salon by magic. In most cases, they're sourced from someplace far, far away—where they can be produced with comparatively cheap labor costs and remain affordable for consumers. And usually, that place is an obscure town in rural China.

In 2016, New Zealand photographer Mike Scott embarked on a journey to Taihe County, China’s “capital of hair,” with New Zealand Herald journalist Olivia Carville. Their goal? To investigate the world’s largest exporter of human hair, and observe the process that turns raw hair into a saleable product. In China, human hair is referred to as “black gold” because it fetches relatively large amounts of money—and so this phrase became the title of Mike and Olivia’s eye-opening editorial project.

VICE spoke to Mike, the photographer, about what he saw and what he learned.

VICE: Hi Mike, tell me how this all came about. Where did you and Olivia get the idea to investigate hair?
Mike: Olivia and I went to a hair salon where people were getting hair extensions. All Olivia asked was “where do they come from?” and the woman in the salon was quite open and said “we think it comes from overseas and places in Asia and so forth.” And that kind of sparked Olivia’s curiosity. Straight away she asked me if I was keen to be involved and so we started covering the salons around Auckland, New Zealand. But it was obvious pretty quickly that we'd need to go overseas.

So you then travelled to China’s "capital of hair" in Taihe. Talk me through your visit.
Trying to get over to China to visit as a journalist is very difficult. So when we were organising all the logistics, we struck a deal with a guy named Allen, a Chinese national living in New Zealand. We agreed that if he came with us as our fixer, we would visit his hometown. Having Allen with us made a huge difference because he could really "talk the talk" and break down the cultural barriers.

And how did the locals respond when you and Olivia showed up in their town?
The people were incredibly friendly. When we got to Taihe we immediately went looking for this hair industry. In doing so, we came across a market located in a carpark where all these people were trading hair. This guy turned up and he had my photo on his phone and he was pointing at me and pointing at his phone. I was wondering, “what is going on, how does he know why I’m here?” But it turned out that it was just a small place and another person we'd visited in the industry had taken a photo of me and sent it to his mate, in a friendly way. We were a bit of a novelty as there were basically no Westerners in a rural area like Taihe. They seemed excited about it.

One of your images depicts a 14-year-old girl, sitting on a stool, about to get her hair cut off. What was your first impression when you saw her?
I felt sorry for her because she really didn't want to get her hair cut off, and especially as this wasn't her first time. Her mum was insisting on it and I think you can see this in the image. I knew that this was going to happen though; it was expected, so I focused on taking the photos. And what was interesting was that people came out onto the street because we were there. We were a bit of spectacle. I noticed that mothers who came out with their daughters were asking the hair agents: “well how much would my daughters’ hair be?” sort of thing. I found this quite interesting.

Is the trade in hair legal?
Yes, none of it's illegal. It seems to me that what we have is a moral issue which is really about what side of the morality you fall on. Is it okay to take a young girls’ hair that is a symbol of who they are? Especially considering how important hair is to young women. But on the other hand, is it taken from them because of their circumstances? They might be poor and need money for themselves or for their family, who insist they get it cut off.

How much are they paid for selling hair?
It depends on the hair agent and the length of the ponytail, but a ponytail that's been growing for three years is worth around NZ$80 (roughly $74 Australian dollars).

Did Taihe seem like a noticeably poor place to you?
As soon as you get out into the countryside, the deprivation seems far greater than in the big cities. It’s fair enough that when a hair agent comes to town, a mother with a daughter with long hair would jump at the opportunity.

So the industry really relies on people jumping at any opportunity to make money.
Well that’s it. It’s about following the money. When we arrived in Taihe, we first went to a place where a labourer was removing hair from hairbrushes and pulling the strands of hair in and out of a weaving machine to try and bring it all back into shape. She was doing this task day in and day out—she would have been doing 12-hour days or maybe even more.

In the Black Gold piece, Olivia mentioned that you were only able to gain access into a hair factory by posing as New Zealand business owners. What was this like?
This was a big issue. We went into the first factory and the person who owned the factory was more than happy to talk to us but just didn’t want any photos taken. Obviously like all journalists’ we want to work in an ethical way, but we would never get the access that we wanted unless we acted as if we were interested in the industry. Allen basically manufactured the perception that we had an interest in buying the hair and from then on, we had clear access and I was able to capture the photos.

Is the hair extension industry controversial in China?
In the towns like Taihe this is a bread and butter industry for people to survive, and generally they don’t see anything wrong with it. There’s a demand from the West world so they think: “hey, we can fulfil that demand and make money at the same time, so why shouldn’t we do it?”

Tell me more about the manufacturing process that turns hair into hair extensions. What are these factory spaces like?
They were generally quite spacious and clean. There was also accommodation for workers around the factories for labourers to live in. A problem lies in the manufacturing process because it involves bleaching the hair, so the labourers are exposed to harmful chemicals for multiple hours. In New Zealand or Australia, I don’t think you could get away with the same conditions, but I think it’s a typical occurrence in China.

Do the factory workers get paid?
They do, but I couldn’t tell you how much.

What does a factory full of boiling hair smell like?
I remember going into some factories where all you could smell was a mixture of chemicals and dampness. Olivia and I would leave thinking “I wouldn’t want to work there,” kind of thing.

Do you think if Australian and New Zealand consumers knew hair extensions were sourced from 14-year-old girls in China, they'd reconsider their purchases?
Yeah, they might reevaluate. When we published Black Gold, people in New Zealand were kind of surprised about where their hair came from, but only because it made it obvious to them that their hair came from somewhere. Before that, I don't think they'd considered that it came from anywhere.

In the end, what did you hope the project would achieve?
You probably think I’m being quite vague, but what Olivia and I tried to do with the project was not to judge at all and just lay it out so you can make a choice. Is this industry okay or not okay? It’s not up to us to tell you.

Interview by Angela Payne. Follow her on Instagram

Check out more of Mike's photography at his website