Millennial Chinese men going bald younger, getting hair transplants to restore their locks and confidence
- Stress, lack of sleep and unhealthy lives have been blamed for a rash of receding hairlines among Chinese men under 40
- Hair transplant surgery, which in Hong Kong can cost more than US$12,500 per session, is on the rise, and robots are making one popular procedure easier
Bald men are often considered intellectual, intelligent and authoritative, studies suggest. Still, men the world over go to great lengths to hang on to their hair. From drugs to surgery, some are willing to try any remedy to avoid a bare scalp.
Of late, male pattern baldness has transfixed Chinese men. News media in mainland China this year reported that young men there are losing their hair much earlier than their fathers did. This was because they are more stressed, do not get enough sleep and do not lead healthy lives, the reports said.
One of China’s leading tertiary institutions, Tsinghua University in Beijing, conducted a survey of 4,000 of its students last year, and found that 60 per cent had experienced some degree of hair loss.
Data from e-commerce giant Alibaba shows that last year, more than seven in 10 consumers of anti-hair-loss products in China were born after 1980. (Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.)
Yin Dongyi, a 28-year-old who lives in Beijing, saw his hairline starting to recede quickly around his temples when he was a college student. His confidence receded with his hairline. He believes unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as staying up late and smoking, made his hair loss worse. It is likely that Yin’s hair follicles were oversensitive to his male sex hormones. This hereditary failing affects hair on the crown, the temples and along the hairline, and gradually spreads over the whole of the scalp.