We are the Other - Hai Singing, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012) I asked Hai if he ever gets bored waiting for customers. “No,” he replied. “I sometimes sit all day and think about music.” The 40 songs he’s written in 20 years traverse loss and migration, witnessing burning bodies in India, sights in Alaska and Wyoming, the death of his mother and the memories of his homeland of Vietnam before the Communists took it over. He was inducted into the South Vietnamese Army at age 20, served as a radio operator for 14 years, and was captured briefly by the Viet Cong, spending a week as a POW before escaping. “I hated it,” he says. “I don’t like communism. I like freedom.” Although he owned a barbershop in Saigon for ten years, he still had to get his barber’s license at the Minneapolis Community & Technical College. He held two jobs, working 14-hour days as a machinist in the morning and then onto Great Clips at night. With his savings he opened up Tip Top last year. He said that in Vietnam the barber, not the customer, chooses the style of hair because back there you only had a scissors and comb while here you use clippers. Also because of communism people were afraid of choice and thought it better to leave the decision up to the barber and not argue. You make a fuss and they’d take you away or kill you. “America knows how to build a civilization,” says Hai. “What better way to understand American culture than to make people look nice? My clients come from all over the world: Mexico, Laos, China, Cambodia, Russia, Africa. You don’t have to be a politician to affect a community. You can just be a small business owner.”
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We are the Other - Hai Singing, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)

I asked Hai if he ever gets bored waiting for customers. “No,” he replied. “I sometimes sit all day and think about music.”

The 40 songs he’s written in 20 years traverse loss and migration, witnessing burning bodies in India, sights in Alaska and Wyoming, the death of his mother and the memories of his homeland of Vietnam before the Communists took it over. He was inducted into the South Vietnamese Army at age 20, served as a radio operator for 14 years, and was captured briefly by the Viet Cong, spending a week as a POW before escaping.

“I hated it,” he says. “I don’t like communism. I like freedom.”

Although he owned a barbershop in Saigon for ten years, he still had to get his barber’s license at the Minneapolis Community & Technical College. He held two jobs, working 14-hour days as a machinist in the morning and then onto Great Clips at night. With his savings he opened up Tip Top last year.

He said that in Vietnam the barber, not the customer, chooses the style of hair because back there you only had a scissors and comb while here you use clippers. Also because of communism people were afraid of choice and thought it better to leave the decision up to the barber and not argue. You make a fuss and they’d take you away or kill you.

“America knows how to build a civilization,” says Hai. “What better way to understand American culture than to make people look nice? My clients come from all over the world: Mexico, Laos, China, Cambodia, Russia, Africa. You don’t have to be a politician to affect a community. You can just be a small business owner.”