Invaders, Braids, and Borders

From Jamaica to Mea Shearim, human hair is never a matter to be taken lightly.

As one of the few parts of the body that is constantly changing yet remains an integral part of its owner, hair has always served as a potent marker of cultural identity and its boundaries.

North Asian cultures, particularly those of the steppe, prized long hair in various elaborate forms. The creation of distinct hairstyles—specifically those combining long hair with meticulously shaved sections—is known to us from ancient depictions dating back to the first centuries CE.

Chinese culture, by contrast, developed a strong tradition of preserving the hair in its entirety, binding it in a topknot as a testament to filial piety (xiao, “孝”) toward ancestors both near and distant:

“Your body, including your hair and skin, you received from your parents; you shall not dare to injure or destroy them. This is the beginning of filial piety.”

When Manchu forces conquered central China in the 17th century, the Manchu elite tied their signature hairstyle (the soncoho) to the very survival of their grip on the Han population. Forcing the male population to adopt the Manchu queue took an entire decade and cost a staggering number of lives.

Throughout the Qing rule—one of the most magnificent and enduring periods of Chinese statehood—the “Manchu” queue became a definitive marker of identity and submission to the dynasty. It functioned as a signifier of ethnic and cultural boundaries; its removal was considered a literal act of treason against the sovereign.

“Shave the hair and keep the head, or keep the hair and lose the head.”

— A Qing Dynasty proverb

On the “New Frontier” of the western Manchu Empire, the queue served as a vital ethnic boundary. While Han men and Chinese Muslims (the “Han Hui”) were required to braid their hair in the Manchu style, the Turkic residents of Xinjiang were spared the practice. These men generally shaved their heads entirely, though community dignitaries were occasionally “granted” the right to grow a queue as a sign of their proximity to the Manchu administration.

The authorities were particularly horrified by cases where Chinese Muslims drifted across the border fortifications and adopted frontier customs.

“Three out of every ten Dongans (Hui-Chinese Muslims) in Gansu are unemployed... they leak across the border as far as Altishahr (Xinjiang). First, they learn the language of the Muslims (Turkic-Uyghur) and there they commit adultery and deceive the people; second, they take local wives, and sometimes go so far as to remove their queues, and finally, they behave like local clerics in every respect... and stir up disorder at the border.”

So absolute was the identification between the Manchu queue and civil order that Kyrgyz slave-takers made a habit of cutting the queues (when they didn't take the entire scalp) of captives seized at the foot of the Tian Shan mountains. This ensured the captives would not dare flee back to their homeland for fear of the authorities’ reaction. Even when these wretched, shorn captives did manage to escape back to imperial territory, they often hid until they could grow at least a decent tuft of hair to prove their commitment to the dynasty and its crown.

As the dynasty hobbled toward the 20th century and eventually disintegrated, the rise of modern Chinese nationalism placed the Manchu queue at the center of public animosity. With the crumbling of the dynasty, and especially after its fall in 1911, the people of China hurried to shear the loathed soncoho from their heads—a symbolic liberation from foreign rule and a sign of national revival.

The fall of the Manchu “Golden Tribe” also heralded the end of the head-tuft as a mark of imperial chic. Yet beyond the yellowing records of history, hair remains a powerful marker of rigid cultural boundaries. Whether between the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Nachlaot and Mea Shearim, or in street battles between skinheads and radicals, hairstyles remain eternal evidence of the hair-thin line between “us” and “them.”

In the photos:

— A “Manchu” queue in all its glory.

— “Manchu” visitors in the Holy Land. Bethlehem, late 19th century (?), from the archives of the Custodia Terrae Sanctae.

— A mullet from the 1980s; the thin line between barbarism and civilization is sometimes unbearably thick.

— Cutting a queue at the end of the Qing Dynasty.

— Qing civilian captives in Russian custody.