As I said, something, ANYTHING, had to be done. The great Sichuanese hair debacle of '05 was upon me.

We walked far, far away from our guesthouse to a trendier part of town. We happened upon a paved pedestrian mall.

High, high up in one of the buildings there was a hair salon with big glass windows overlooking the street.

Inauspiciously, the salon's name was 'Mage'.

But this little black duck (wearing Chairman Mao's hair) had nothing to lose. And so up we went.

I came armed this time with a very old passport photo of myself wearing a favourite hairstyle. Very, very, very short was the hairstyle. And very, very, very expensive too, in Sydney money.

Here, the first quote for 'make my hair short' was $4 AUD. Then, upon seeing the photo, the price rose to $6 AUD.

Whatever, just fix it - I beg of you.

Andrew put in his request, too: Shave my head. Take it all off. Every last scrap of shoulder-length, wavy hair.

We were taken to fancy washbasins with padded reclining chairs. We were primped and washed and cleaned and massaged. There was more kneading and pressing of little nobbles on my skull than one would have had in a Victorian Phrenologist's consultation.

Then we were whisked away to separate parts of the salon. My funky male cutter set to work.

He got rid of EVERY last scrap of god-awful bulk and bouffe and Mao-esque nightmare, and set about recreating the passport photo to a tee. My new hair was only one inch long all over my head. It sat down perfectly.

The man was a god.

Suddenly, he threw down his scissors and called for assistance from the salon's only English-speaker.

To be frank, what followed was very much like the scene in Lost in Translation where epic, rambling raves on the part of the funky Japanese ad-man director are translated to Bill Murray as, 'he says, "Please look right!"'

Only, in my case, the epic rave was translated thus: 'Okay, perm now?'

Perm? What the???

This hairstyle is one inch long, lady. What's to perm?

'Perm?' I answered, uncertainly.

'Yes. He perm you now?'

I looked at my sleek-headed passport photo and got it! My hair there was dyed! He wants to know if he should dye it now!

'Oh! You mean "colour" now?'

'No. Perm.'

'Permanent Wave, perm?'

'Yes!'

'Perm, P-E-R-M?'

'Yes,' she affirmed again, growing tired of my games now.

'Um, no. No, not perm. Definitely do NOT perm. Thank you.'

It was all I could manage.

The last thing I needed here was to go from being Mao for a day to being Australia's answer to Junichiro Koizumi instead.

And then it was over. And I was short-locked and happy again. And Andrew looked utterly amazing.

We paid our $12 AUD and left, with the staff clustered around the elevator entrance chorusing 'BYE-BYE!' as we went.