The Many Ways of Being Human

5.10

The Manchu

A barber on a Chinese street corner shaves a man's forehead and braids the rest into a queue, under a notice that amounts to: keep your hair, lose your head. The year is 1645, and the hairstyle belongs to a small forest people from the northeast. The chapter follows the Manchu, who ruled an empire for nearly three hundred years and now number ten million on paper.