Audio slide show. Audio by: Mariel Grazella, photos by: Moch N. Kurniawan
Barbershops: A fading ode to an era gone by
By Mariel Grazella
Snip, snip, snip went the shiny pair of scissors in the aged hands of 82-year-old barber Po Ting
Pang as he trimmed off sections of his client’s whitening hair, gripped gently by a faded red plastic comb.
“I started working in this barber shop in 1947,” he said, adding that his “eyes are still sharp” and his
“ears have no problem hearing”.
In more than six decades as a barber at Ko Tang barbershop, now partially hidden behind a bustling food stalls in the Chinatown area of Glodok, West Jakarta, Po Ting Pang has gained a legion of long-time, loyal clients, the more so as the barber also offers services such as ear-cleaning and massages.
“Some of my clients are more than 80 years old and one of them is in his 90s. Now that they are too old
to travel, they call me to their homes,” he told The Jakarta Post, adding that he went as far as Muara Karang in North Jakarta and Tomang in West Jakarta on his monthly house calls.
“They pay my taxi fare or send their drivers to pick me up,” Ting Pang said. More
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